The Making of a Family
by DezoPenguin
Summary: When Lillet and Amoretta consider adding to their family, it not only requires looking to the future but resolving leftover issues from the past.
1. Lillet

Viktor Ketel's bookshop was one of Lillet Blan's favorite places in the capital. His storefront was in the Old Quarter, the twisted mass of close-set medieval buildings that were the original heart of the city. He'd started small, an immigrant with a couple of shoprooms and an eye for a deal, but had soon thrived and sought to expand. However, due to the irregular nature of the leases and ownership of the block of adjoining buildings around his store, he'd been forced to expand in odd ways--an attic _here_, a second-floor room _there_ and the like, all connected by a nest of narrow, ill-lit staircases, almost like a kind of plant growing up through the block. Lillet liked it because it was one of the weird, almost magical places in the city that had a sense of wonder and mystery about them. Stepping inside raised a ghost of the feeling of enchantment she'd felt when as a teenage girl she'd entered the Magic Academy at the Silver Star Tower for the first time.

Thus, when the Mage Consul felt a tug on her dress and looked down to see a small boy with tousled black hair looking at up at her with wide eyes, it didn't strike her so much as a matter for concern as being just one more unusual happening, the kind of magical randomness that occurred in that type of place.

"C-can you find my mommy?" the boy asked. He looked to be no more than five or six, and there were faint hints of tears starting in his eyes. Lillet immediately gave him her biggest, most reassuring smile.

"Of course!" she said, hoping as she said it that the boy's mother was just off in another room and not miles away or dead or something like that. Just because he _wanted_ his mother didn't mean that was whom he'd come to Ketel's with. "I'm a magician, after all!"

"Nuh-uh," the boy said, shaking his head.

"Yes, I am."

"Nuh-uh," the boy insisted again. "You're young an' pretty, an' witches are all old and wrinkly like Grammy, an' they wear pointy black hats, an' they have crookedy pointy noses like beaks!"

_Somebody likes fairy tales_, Lillet thought.

"Well, your grammy was young and pretty once, too, and I do have a pointy black hat; I just left it downstairs because it would bump on the ceiling." That was essentially true; the ceilings were only six and a half or seven feet high in many of the rooms.

The boy looked at her doubtfully.

"Are you sure?"

"I'll prove it!"

Lillet rubbed her thumb over a plain silver ring on her right hand. Since even a magician as powerful as she was took a minute or two to cast a Rune and summon a familiar, she'd enchanted a number of talismans in advance by binding various spirits to them, in case she needed to summon something in a hurry. At once, a fairy appeared in mid-air, a delicate blonde girl in a green dress with iridescent dragonfly-like wings buzzing to keep her aloft.

"I'm here!" the fairy said cheerfully. "What's happening?"

"Wow!" the boy exclaimed, his mouth an open O. "You really can do magic!"

"I told you. So let's find your mommy, okay? What's her name?"

The boy looked confused. "It's...it's...She's Mommy."

_Of course_.

"Well, what's _your_ name?"

"Adam," he said.

"What's your last name?"

"Samuels."

Lillet nodded.

"Go look for his mother," she told the fairy. "She should be in the store somewhere--isn't that right?" she asked Adam.

"Uh-huh," he agreed, nodding.

"Okay, fine!" the fairy chirped, and flew off.

"There! She'll find your mommy for you."

"Shouldn't we look too?"

"Nope. When you're lost, you should always wait in a safe place and let the people looking come find you. If you move around, you might go somewhere they've already looked."

"But I'm not lost! _Mommy_ is!"

Lillet winked.

"She doesn't know that, I bet. She probably thinks _you're_ the one who's lost."

"Really?" Adam asked, as if unable to understand how anyone could possibly believe that.

"Really! I grew up on a farm, and my mommy would get lost in our corn fields all the time when I was a little girl, but she'd _always_ think it was me who was lost. I think it's just part of being a mommy."

Adam wrinkled up his nose.

"That's _strange_."

"Yeah, but we'd better wait here anyway, or else she'll just get scared and probably mad at us."

"Mmm." He paused, then an idea hit him. "Hey, do some more magic!"

Lillet laughed.

"I shouldn't do that. Mr. Ketel would get mad if I damaged any of his books." She patted the nearest shelf, which reached all the way to the ceiling. The odd rows of shelves made the place even more maze-like than its crazy-quilt architecture; you could be ten feet away from a dozen people and never know it. It was no wonder, Lillet thought, that a boy Adam's age had gotten lost. "I'll tell you a story, though."

His eyes grew wide.

"Really? With knights an' dragons an' everything?"

"Yes, with knights and dragons and everything," she said with a laugh. Since he clearly hadn't gotten his fair share of "good witch" tales, she told him the story of Sir Gareth, who was the son of a petty king but had pretended to be a kitchen boy so he could prove himself worthy on his own, and how he'd helped the enchantress Lynnette rescue her sister from the evil Sir Ironside of the Red Lands. Around halfway through, Lillet's fairy brought back a plump woman clutching an armload of books, but Adam was so spellbound that she remained quiet despite her obvious relief at finding him safe.

Adam was surprised when they got to the end of the story and Sir Gareth married the witch instead of the rescued sister.

"I thought when you rescued a princess you got to marry her."

"Well, he didn't know her, and who'd want to marry a girl they didn't know?"

"Not me!" Adam agreed at once.

"Right, and heroic knights shouldn't do silly things that you're smart enough to avoid."

"That was a great story, though."

"You should tell your mommy about it," Lillet said, and pointed. Adam turned around and his eyes widened.

"Mommy!" Adam launched himself at the woman and glomped tightly onto her leg. She shifted her books to free an arm and hugged him just as tightly to her.

"She was calling for him," the fairy said, "but this place is weird; she was only one room away but there's a whole apartment in between there and here so you couldn't hear her."

"It was good work. Thank you very much," Lillet told her familiar.

"Of course!" the fairy said smugly, and in another instant the nature spirit had vanished back into Faerie.

Adam's mother was busily trading off between being happy her son was safe and chastising him for not staying close to her like she'd told him, but she took the time to turn back to Lillet.

"Thank you so much for looking after him. I...I don't know what I'd have done if...if anything had..."

"Aw, it's okay, Mrs. Samuels. I have a couple of little brothers. I know how boys that age are."

"Still, at least let me thank you properly, Miss--"

"Lillet Blan."

Apparently, Mrs. Samuels had heard the name; she paled suddenly and despite being encumbered by her books on one side and Adam on the other managed to give a passable imitation of a curtsey.

"I'm...I'm so sorry to have put you to so much trouble, Mage Consul," she said in a very small voice.

"Oh, don't be silly."

"Mommy, do you know this lady?" Adam asked.

"She's the Mage Consul, Her Majesty's personal adviser on magical matters."

"Wow!" Adam said, probably not understanding most of that but realizing from his mother's reaction that it meant something important.

"Well, today," Lillet said, smiling, "I'm just a passing witch who tells stories and finds lost mothers for good children."

"Y-yes, my lady."

Lillet sighed. Mrs. Samuels was clearly a hopeless case when faced with authority.

"Just take care in the future, okay? You've got a real treasure to protect."

No longer in the mood to shop, Lillet left the bookstore and let her carriage take her home. It was annoying when a title made people act weird around her, but she supposed it was only to be expected. That was the nature of power, any power, and was only enhanced by the unnaturalness of magic. It was still annoying.

Lillet's townhouse was a mansion in the New City, one of many such estates that marched along Argentine Way, each a little island behind its brick walls. Lillet's wall was different from most because it lacked the nasty-looking spikes so many had, instead featuring stone gargoyles every twenty feet or so. These weren't merely decorative statues but genuine alchemical creations, symbols that would awaken and breathe fire at those attempting entry by force. The gates swung open automatically at the carriage's approach, then closed behind them as the coachman took them up the front drive. He stopped before the door and Lillet hopped down without waiting for him to come around and assist.

Lillet had just gotten through the front door into the foyer when the sound of scampering footsteps preceded a beautiful ash-blonde into the room.

"Lillet, you're back!"

Amoretta Virgine looked to be around eighteen. She'd looked that way when Lillet had first met her six years ago, when Amoretta had been one hundred and six days old, and she'd look the same for however long she continued to exist, as was the nature of a homunculus. She had been the ultimate creation of Lillet's alchemy instructor, Chartreuse Grande, the spirit of an angel incarnated in an artificially crafted body. Very much unlike most homunculi she had not stayed with her creator but had followed Lillet, who could offer her the one thing that Chartreuse could not, something that made her existence complete.

Since Lillet's arms were empty, she opened them as Amoretta rushed towards her, closing around the other woman in a gentle embrace.

"Were you in the front parlor so you could see when I came back?" Lillet teased.

"I missed you," Amoretta said. "I hate being apart."

"Me, too," agreed Lillet, though she didn't mean it in quite the same way. Togetherness was almost a physical need for the homunculus, while Lillet only suffered the ache in her heart caused by the separation from the one she loved when they were apart. She let out a long sigh, holding Amoretta against her.

"Lillet, what's wrong? Did something happen? You never come home from Ketel's without any books, and now you feel so tense."

"I...I just had a hard reminder of what my life has cost me."

Amoretta slipped a hand up and gently cupped the side of Lillet's face, meeting her gaze with a look of concern that was so intense it carried tangible force.

"Please tell me, my love. Let me bear any burden along with you," she said, and as always Lillet's heart melted.

"All right." She told Amoretta everything about Adam and his mother. Amoretta listened intently--she always did--laughing at the funny parts, looking sad at the end when Mrs. Samuels had been overcome at the realization of Lillet's high rank.

"It can be hard, living in a world where you're always set apart from those around you."

"You'd know better than I would about that."

Amoretta nodded.

"I think it's easier for me in some ways, though. I never was human, so I've been different from the day I was made and have always known it. Nothing I do will _make_ me human, and I wouldn't want to be because it would mean losing part of me. You, though, have changed what you are and how you're seen through your own choices. That's different, because you aren't just imagining what it's like to be the same as other people but you actually know it."

"You're too good for me, little love," Lillet said with a wistful smile. "But the truth is, while it's annoying and it does hurt when people bow and scrape...or when they get scared and angry because they think I'm a freak or a monster...I wouldn't give up my magic just to be accepted and I wouldn't give up you for anything. That isn't what it was that upset me."

Amoretta tipped her head to one side, looking at Lillet from a slightly off-angle, a mannerism that she often used when she was curious.

"Oh? Then what was it?"

Lillet smiled wistfully.

"It reminded me of how much I'd wanted children."

--

_NOTE:_ _Viktor Ketel's name comes from Ketel One vodka, and Adam Samuels is from Sam Adams beer. The version of Gareth Beaumains' story which Lillet tells to Adam is my favorite variation on the tale and I believe originated with Tennyson's "The Idylls of the King"--Malory has Gareth marrying Lionors instead of Lynnette (um, and I think uses the spellings Lionors and Linnet...but I digress). Incidentally, Ketel's bookstore is based on an actual used-book shop that was open in Champaign, Illinois when I was an undergrad; the place wasn't quite as mazelike as Ketel's but the second floor was divided up into a bunch of different rooms that required a fair bit of exploring to make sure you'd actually found everything that was there. I wonder if it's still open..._


	2. Amoretta

Children.

It wasn't the first time the subject had come up between them. Lillet and Amoretta weren't just lovers, after all; they were a couple, a family. Amoretta knew that Lillet loved children, and hadn't just discarded her thoughts of becoming a mother some day when she'd realized as a girl that she had a talent for magic.

Amoretta was a different case. She'd never been around children, and indeed had never even been a child herself. As an artificial existence, she was incapable of bringing forth new life and indeed lacked any biological drive to do so. Lovemaking for her was exactly that, a means of expressing and strengthening love and intimacy, the reason why it was only Lillet that aroused her. Perhaps it was because she was a homunculus, or perhaps again it was because that body had been built around an angel, a purely spiritual entity with no previous tie to a physical existence. Amoretta couldn't be sure, since she had no memory of her past life before her current incarnation, only vague ghosts that sometimes danced in her dreams.

In a way, she'd realized a few years ago when the topic came up, it was fortunate that the one who loved her was of the same sex. Even if Amoretta was a normal human woman she would not have been able to conceive a child with Lillet, so the infertility inherent in her body's nature didn't make things any worse.

But it didn't make them any better, either.

"I've been thinking about it more often, lately," Lillet said quietly. They'd released their embrace, but still stood closely together, Lillet's hand warm around Amoretta's.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Amoretta asked.

Lillet smiled wanly.

"I don't think that would do any good."

"It might, even if it's only to let me share what you're feeling. And if you're in pain, it doesn't do any good to hide that truth."

"Oh, Amoretta, you're always so honest."

For her part, Amoretta always found it strange how people were so often dishonest with themselves and each other. It was so much neater and cleaner to simply say what one meant. Yet people so rarely did so, and even more oddly the lies were so often not for sinful reasons but to avoid causing others pain and worry--yet, Amoretta thought, the major reason that the truth sometimes _did_ wound was because people were so conditioned to expect a polite lie that the truth was like a sudden bright light in pitch darkness.

"Do you still love me?" she asked.

"Of course! Amoretta, how could you even--"

Amoretta reached out and pressed two fingers against Lillet's lips, silencing her protests.

"Then so long as that isn't what you have to say, nothing you can tell me, no pain you have to share, could hurt worse than seeing you worried and hurting and bearing the burden alone for fear of hurting _me_." Saying it was easy, because it was true. Getting Lillet to believe it might be harder, but Lillet trusted her honesty.

"All right," she told Amoretta after a moment's consideration. "You're right; I'm not being fair to you." She glanced around the foyer. "Can we go somewhere else and talk about this?"

"Why not the parlor? The tea things are already set out."

"A cup might help me relax," Lillet agreed.

The parlor was a light and airy room, with a series of bay windows facing the front of the house. The predominant color was white, with floral patterns on the wallpaper and carpet that gave the room an atmosphere of feminine elegance. They used it often for receiving social calls from Court ladies and gentlemen, whether it was Lillet's rank and position or Amoretta's growing fame as a singer that drew them. A silver tea-tray sat on the low central table; Amoretta removed the padded cosy from the china teapot and poured the still-steaming liquid into a delicate cup, then added lemon and passed the cup to Lillet.

"Thank you."

Though they usually sat next to one another when they were alone together, often touching, this time they took facing seats as if by mutual instinct. Lillet sipped her tea, gathering her thoughts. Love and family, Amoretta had learned, were the only things that could put Lillet at a loss for what to do, so she waited patiently, letting Lillet come to it in her own time.

"I've...been thinking about it a lot over the past few months," she finally began.

"Oh?"

"You know that it's always been a thought for me, that I wanted to have children someday." When Amoretta nodded, Lillet continued, "When I was younger, though, it didn't really matter much. I mean, at eighteen or nineteen, I had much more immediate concerns and wants. Having a baby was a matter for the far-off future, so my concerns were...abstract, I guess I'd call it."

She took another sip of tea.

"But I'm older now, getting into the age where most women who want children have had one--or more--and it's really started to hit home. It's...it's not that I have any regrets. I've gotten to do things and live a life that I could only dream about as a girl. I mean, if Dad had told me that when I grew up I'd visit the palace and regularly talk to Her Majesty and live in the capital in a home big enough for everyone in the village, or that I'd become a magician and fight ghosts and devils and evil wizards, or that I'd find the kind of love that poets and playwrights and storytellers go on about and be able to feel it grow stronger every day for years on end...well, I'd have thought Mom had let the cider ferment too long! I wouldn't give up a bit of it!"

Lillet sighed, then smiled wanly.

"I guess it's just human nature to always want more. I know there are some people who don't want children and are perfectly happy that way, but I do want a family. I do want to be a mother."

"I see."

"And of course we can't have a child together. You couldn't even have one with a man, could you?"

Amoretta shook her head.

"No, I don't think so."

"I didn't either. Most alchemical creations don't even have a gender, so it's amazing work that you're female; I have no idea where I'd possibly begin trying to make a homunculus that could reproduce."

It was odd. Lillet was only stating the plain facts, not any kind of insult, and yet it sent a stab of pain through Amoretta's heart. The irony of her own words come back to her bitterly. Lillet not trusting her might have been a worse pain, but that didn't mean that this wouldn't hurt as well.

"You...want a child very badly, don't you, Lillet?" she asked. For her to offer an apology wasn't appropriate; her pain came not from anything she'd done wrong but because she hadn't been able to help her love.

Lillet nodded.

"I do. I want someone to carry on in the future. I want the things that I've done to have lasting value. I..." Her large, bright eyes, their shade more of a true purple than a violet, grew moist. "I want us to be a family in every way."

Amoretta considered that. She certainly judged that she and Lillet were bound together as tightly as any husband and wife, and she couldn't see how a child would change that. Yet there was at least something in what she said. Family was made up of an extended group of people joined by bonds of love. It wasn't the same as having one person to love in the romantic sense. Amoretta had never really had such a thing. Her creator had only seen her as the product of his alchemy, a remarkable creation but not as someone to love. It was why she was with Lillet, who could give her the love she so desperately needed. Indeed, her dependence on Lillet's love was so great it would have been a bit disturbing in a human being; they both knew it, even as they also knew it was an inescapable fact of her nature as a homunculus.

"I'd like that too," she said.

"What?" It seemed to surprise Lillet.

"I'd also like to have a family with you," she said. "I've never been part of one before, and while your family has been very kind to me, they live well away and we don't see them very often. It would be nice."

"Amoretta, are you saying that..."

She nodded.

"I may not be able to conceive a child, but I would not object to raising one." She paused, considering her words. "I don't know if I would make a very good mother, but I'm sure that you would, and I am certain that I would love any child of ours."

Lillet's face lit up.

"Amoretta..."

"Now, the only question is to determine how two women together can have a child," she said more matter-of-factly. Just seeing Lillet happy made her want to jump across the table and embrace her again, but she really wanted to finish the discussion completely. "The first way would be for you to conceive a natural child with a willing man."

"_No_," said Lillet flatly.

"There are difficulties--particularly since a worthy man probably would not want to abandon his rights and responsibilities as a father, and--"

"I said no," Lillet repeated. "That idea's not even open for discussion. I would _never_ let anyone but you touch me in that way." Amoretta was a bit surprised--Lillet had used the same tone of voice as when she'd pledged her love to Amoretta, that from-the-heart intensity that was almost a kind of fury. "It would be just like adultery, even if it is for a specific and limited purpose. Male or female, for love or pleasure or fertility, it doesn't matter--I'll have you and no one else."

A warmth seemed to spread through Amoretta, almost as if she could feel the heat from Lillet's feelings.

"I'd...have been willing if it was what you wanted, but I'm so glad that it's not."

"Little love, you'll always come first with me, for now and for always." It was an endearment, but Amoretta could feel the intensity behind it that made it a promise as well.

"As will you, with me."

They were silent for a few seconds, letting the moment linger, before Amoretta continued with the subject.

"Anyway, if we rule out a natural child, then that leaves adoption."

Lillet nodded.

"I suppose so," she said, then sighed.

"What's wrong?"

"I...I feel like I'm a bad person for saying this, but...I don't want to adopt. I want a child of my own." She looked directly at Amoretta. "I want a child of _our_ own, one that's _of_ us, not just raised by us."

Amoretta considered that.

"I think that I see what you mean. I doesn't seem like a very charitable attitude, but yet a very natural one. People certainly want children, or else they wouldn't have them." Lillet winced slightly at "not very charitable," which Amoretta regretted, but there really wasn't any other way to put it. A decision _not_ to adopt, after all, meant a child who would have to grow up in an orphanage or on the streets. Yet, at the same time, there was something to Lillet's feelings. The idea of a child who could carry on one's own bloodlines held a powerful appeal. Even Amoretta, a created life without a family history at all, wasn't completely immune to the allure of the idea. The problem was that the idea was an irrelevancy.

"I can understand," she continued, "but Lillet, there's no way for two women to have a natural child together."

"All right, yes," Lillet said. "Nature does require male and female to produce human offspring...but what about an _unnatural_ child?"

"I'm not really sure that I understand."

"Well, you're an unnatural life, in the sense that you were created by alchemy. Magic let you exist, so...I'd like to see if it can bridge that gap. I'm an ordinary woman who as far as I know can have a baby. I just need to see if I can find a way to make that baby yours."


	3. Chartreuse

_NOTE: This chapter begins something that a number of my readers and reviewers have asked about in response to various earlier fics. So...if you still remember that you asked for it, enjoy!_

The residents of Argentine Way were used to displays of wealth and power, from the elegant and understated to the fantastically ostentatious. The street was, after all, home to the mansions of Court ministers, the townhouses of the aristocracy, and the homes of the wealthiest of the _nouveau riche_ bourgeois. If anything, the servants treated the unusual with even more aplomb than their masters according to the rigid codes of belowstairs society, however a-twitter they might be among themselves.

Nonetheless, when two jewel-toned dragons, the lead one the reddish purple of garnet and the trailing one the pale green of jade, spiraled down out of the sky to land within the boundaries of one of the estates, more than one pair of eyes were turned upwards and more than one mouth gaped open.

Had they been able to see the rider who descended from the garnet dragon, they would have gaped even more. Though he wore elegant hand-tooled riding leathers suitable for an aristocrat, his hands were covered in bronze fur and their thick fingers tipped with retractable claws while a tufted, furred tail protruded from the back of his breeches. These qualities were strictly secondary ones, reflecting the fact that the man's head was that of a great male lion, at least twice the size of an ordinary human head and with a wild, flowing mane.

With his companion from the second dragon trailing just behind him, the lion-headed man crossed the lawn and went up to the front steps. A footman answered his knock and wasn't able to suppress a flinch at the spectacle.

"Dr. Chartreuse Grande to see Miss Blan," he said in an urbane, educated voice.

"Y-yes, sir," the footman stammered.

"Don't worry, Will; I'll take care of things." Chartreuse couldn't see at first who'd spoken, as the owner of the high-pitched, childlike voice was hidden behind the footman. In the next moment, he stepped into sight, revealing himself as an elf dressed in traditional green. Seeing him next to the servant, Chartreuse realized that the footman's livery suggested the style of the elven outfit as closely as it could while still maintaining its identity as proper livery.

"Do you have any luggage, Doc?" the elf asked.

"Yes, and our mounts will need stabling and fodder, as they were bred rather than summoned."

The elf nodded.

"All right. Will, you and Eric go and get the Doctor and his companion's bags and bring them to the red and blue bedrooms. Have Jenna see to the dragons."

"Yes, sir. D-dragons?"

"Of course dragons. What else do you expect a master magician to ride?"

"Y-yes, sir." The footman scuttled off.

"Come on, Doc. Lillet and Amoretta are on the terrace; they'll be glad to see you."

The elf led the way into the house, with a bemused Chartreuse following along. Elves were among the most common servants used by magicians, but this one appeared to occupy a position of authority in the household. After a moment, he recalled that when Lillet had graduated from the Magic Academy six years ago, she'd taken with her the elf that had been her room caretaker. If this was the same elf, it was no surprise that he now was apparently the majordomo.

He took the guests out onto a marble terrace overlooking a sun-drenched garden. Lillet was seated at a stone table, cups and saucers holding down stacks of documents which she was busy shuffling through and annotating with a quill pen. Amoretta was sitting in the next chair, reading, apparently content to just share the same space as her lover.

"Lillet, Amoretta, your guests are here."

The two women looked up, Lillet happy and Amoretta pensive at the sight of the leonine alchemist. He'd expected the latter, but it still hurt as a reminder of past mistakes. They both rose politely.

"Dr. Chartreuse! I'm so glad you were able to come."

"Not at all, Miss Lillet. I'm aware that it's rather more personal for you, but you've offered me a chance at an extraordinarily fascinating project in alchemical and natural science. Besides which," he added with a glance at Amoretta, "it offers me the opportunity to make amends for wrongs done."

"I would not call it a wrong, Creator," Amoretta told him, "unless you consider your lack of responsibility a sin."

He let out a sigh and nodded slowly.

"I am afraid that I do. You were fortunate to find Miss Lillet to give you what I could not--no, what I _did_ not."

"Good. Lillet told me that you were learning, but I wasn't completely sure." She turned to Chartreuse's companion meaningfully.

Chartreuse nodded again, then performed the introduction.

"Amoretta, I'm certain you already know her, but I would like to formally introduce you to your sister, Tahlea. Tahlea, this is Amoretta Virgine. I've told you about her."

He stepped back and turned to the side so he could see both women at once. The effect was a bit disconcerting, because externally Amoretta and Tahlea were utterly identical, moreso even than human twins, every line of face and figure a precise copy. Their clothing was different; initially Tahlea had worn leftover clothing Amoretta had left behind but had soon developed her own tastes: a sleeveless emerald tunic that fell to knee length worn over pale green tights, with low boots and jingling copper bangles on both wrists. Amoretta's white dress was both less practical and more revealing. Likewise, they had different hairstyles; Amoretta's foxtail fell to waist length and left hair free to spill over her shoulders, while Tahlea's hair was pulled back in an almost boyish queue that didn't even reach the middle of her back. Their faces and bodies, though, were utterly identical, as befitted homunculi created by identical processes with the same laboratory equipment.

Tahlea shivered slightly as she met Amoretta's gaze. She'd been so excited at the thought of meeting her "sister," and though Chartreuse had cautioned her he had the feeling that Tahlea hadn't quite banished the assumption that she was about to expand her family circle by one. That Amoretta might not be of like mind, it seemed, hadn't sunk in as a genuine possibility.

Chartreuse laid a reassuring hand on the homunculus's shoulder.

"It's all right," he said. "I'm sure the two of you have a lot to talk over. You don't need to let my past interfere."

She brightened at once.

"Besides," he continued, "Miss Lillet and I need to talk shop, and while you may be crafted from alchemy I know its minutiae tends to put you to sleep better than a lullaby. Perhaps Amoretta could show you the gardens?"

Amoretta paused a moment, then nodded.

"All right."

"There, you see?"

Tahlea swallowed nervously, then tried to smile.

"Okay, Father."

Lillet blinked in surprise, but didn't comment. Instead she said, "Well, if that's settled, let me show you to the lab, Dr. Chartreuse."

They'd barely gotten one room away from the terrace, though, when Lillet came out with the question.

"She calls you 'Father'?"

"I've learned from my mistakes," Chartreuse said. "That is, after all, the scientific method, and it is equally applicable to human hearts."

"So you said to yourself, 'Well, it didn't work right in the first experiment, so this time I'll try loving her and see what happens'?" Lillet drawled. Her sarcasm stung, but then Chartreuse considered what he'd said and chuckled ruefully.

"I did phrase that badly, didn't I? No, it was more a matter that I came to the realization that I'd failed with Amoretta because I had not loved her for her own sake but only for what she represented as a laboratory experiment, and that any further experimentation along those lines would be equally doomed unless I was capable of making that change. It took nearly a year for that to sink in."

"So Tahlea is around five years old, then?"

Chartreuse shook his massive head, his mane tossed by the motion.

"Oh, no. Coming to an intellectual realization of what was necessary was one thing, but to find the emotional capacity within myself to actually do it was quite another. I knew that I could not chance making another ultimate homunculus until I was certain I could properly treat her with love. Then of course there were the technical questions concerning her core to be addressed--Amoretta's angel core did not provide access to heavenly knowledge, since the homunculus's mind is born without memories, and in addition it made her existence too much of a temptation for devils. So all in all Tahlea had only been born a month before you met her on your recent visit to the tower."

"Is that why she was so shy?"

"To some extent. I chose a fairy core this time, as a fairy is a nature spirit and therefore familiar with an existence as a physical life as its own self. I'd hoped this would make her transition into this new, created life easier than it had been for Amoretta. I neglected, however, the fact that alchemy is inimical to the magic and spirits of glamour, as alchemy manipulates and changes nature while glamour expresses it. Thus as a homunculus with a fairy spirit, the magic of her own body felt threatening and confining to her soul. I gather that it was extremely uncomfortable for her until she came to understand the source of the problem and accustom herself to it. It made her very nervous and fearful when she was young, because her instincts were constantly telling her of danger when there was no apparent threat." He smiled, or as close as a lion's face could, and said with pride, "Tahlea has quite overcome this fear and accepted her current existence, although she is still a bit shy in new situations."

"Probably it's habit," Lillet suggested, "learned in the equivalent of her childhood."

"I daresay. But since it is merely a mannerism and not a debilitating trait, I see no reason to insist that she try to change. I am, after all, her father rather than her master."

"I wish you'd felt that way about Amoretta."

Chartreuse nodded slowly. They'd continued to walk, passing through rooms and tastefully decorated halls.

"As do I." He considered for a moment whether or not to say more, then decided it was best to be completely open. Lillet, after all, could be his best ally--or if she suspected ulterior motives, an insurmountable obstacle. It was better to simply be direct, as Amoretta would be.

"The truth is," he said, "that's one of the reasons that I agreed to come here. Of course, your own situation is not insignificant; I have the chance to assist a former student solve a personal problem and at the same time confront a fascinating dilemma in alchemy. But I admit that it was more than that which convinced me to take several weeks away from teaching. I'm hoping to make amends and repair my relationship with Amoretta."

"I see. The prodigal father returns?"

"That describes it rather well. Raising Tahlea, being a father to her, has given me an appreciation of how badly I erred with Amoretta. I know I cannot undo past mistakes, but I would like to try and at least admit my failings and be more to Amoretta than just a dispassionate creator. If we are successful, I would like to greet your baby when it is born not just as a research assistant but as his or her grandfather."

"That will be between you and Amoretta," Lillet said. "But, I do hope that you succeed. I'd like it if she could have a real family." For a moment it looked as if Lillet was going to say something more, but whatever it was remained unspoken. Instead, she opened a door and led the way into her library.

"Magnificent," he said. The room was two stories tall and irregularly shaped, tapering at the far end. An overhead skylight let in light, and two massive lanterns bracketed it for night use. The lanterns didn't seem to have any way to be lowered from their chains, suggesting that Lillet had done something with magic to make them illuminate since refilling candles or oil would seem impossible. The bookshelves were floor-to-ceiling along all four walls except for the doorways and the massive hearth; a flying gallery ringed the room on the second story, a gleaming brass rail along its edge, and two curving staircases led up to it on either side of the room. The parquet floor threw back the light from its highly-polished surface, and long tables and comfortable chairs lined the center of the room, each with stacks of paper and pen-trays for taking notes. The bookshelves weren't all full, but were respectably so, with titles ranging from arcane grimoires to treatises on history, philosophy, natural science, and political theory, to popular plays and novels.

"If I didn't live at the Magic Academy," Chartreuse observed, "I would envy you your library."

"That reminds me; I need to return Professor Gammel's copy of the _Oberon Script_. Would you mind taking it when you go back?"

"Not at all."

"Thank you. It saves me some trouble, and I'd rather entrust a rare grimoire to you than a courier anyway. The lab is just through there, by the way."

She pointed to a door at the tapered end of the room.

"Isn't there a danger of fire or other accident?"

"That wall is specially reinforced, and on top of that I spent about a week shoring it up with some of the most comprehensive magical barriers I know of." She chuckled and added, "I think I gave the Royal Magicians a collective headache when I had the palace security redone to match. It took the better part of two months to finish the job, but the palace has never been safer from magic."

Chartreuse chuckled. While accidents were not as common as cliche painted them, no alchemy lab was free of the occasional incident. He hadn't thought of adapting safety precautions into magical security, though, although it wasn't his job to do so.

"Quite clever, Miss Lillet."

"Well, it keeps our home in one piece."

"Indeed."

Chartreuse observed that she'd gotten quite off the topic of his relationships with Amoretta and Tahlea. It might be that Lillet was simply more concerned with the intensely personal topic that had brought him there, but he doubted it. She had said her piece, and was leaving the rest to him.

He clapped his hands together.

"Well, then. Shall we set to work creating a miracle?"

--

_NOTES: Chartreuse's coming to terms with his own feelings about his creations is the subject of my one-shot fic, "An Alchemy of Needs," which most of you reading this have probably already read._

_And I admit freely that if I ever get the chance to build my dream home, Lillet's library will be in it!_


	4. Tahlea

Tahlea watched her twin homunculus's back as Amoretta walked down the terrace steps and out towards the gardens. They were an elaborate and beautiful design, combining trees, shrubs, hedge-rows, and beds of flowers, and obviously took a great deal of care to maintain in their condition. Roses predominated, but other flowers were there as well, some she recognized from her studies in alchemical herbalism and others that were entirely unknown to her.

She'd never been outside the Silver Star Tower before, and while she'd seen the forests and meadows, lawns and pastures of the surrounding countryside from its windows, Tahlea had never been this close to so much that was alive and growing. There was a..._rightness_, she supposed, about it that made her feel happy, despite her nervousness.

"These gardens are lovely," she said. "If we had something like this at the Tower I think I'd spend all my time in them."

"They are pretty to look at," Amoretta replied evenly. "Gaff's cousins do an excellent job."

"Gaff? Is he the elf we met before?" He'd seemed to know Father, and Father had told her that Lillet and Amoretta had taken a caretaker elf with them from the Tower.

"That's right. Some of his family are garden elves, and they're much more skilled with plants than are humans."

Tahlea gently brushed her fingertips against the petals of a white rose. There was a luxuriant softness to the living flower like nothing she'd ever felt before, velvety but pulsing with rich life.

"It's so glorious! I never imagined a place could feel so alive. It's so different from the bare stone of the Tower."

Amoretta inclined her head to one side, looking curiously at Tahlea.

"Is it? I can't really tell."

"You can't?" Tahlea was bewildered. How could anyone not feel the energies that swirled around them so freely? It was as if the garden elves had arranged things, encouraged growth in a way not only to produce beauty but in patterns that developed and redoubled the presence of Glamour magic like a natural gate to Faerie.

_Oh._

Tahlea knew that at her core was the spirit of a fairy, a being of natural magic. It was this core that gave her the freedom to exist away from the flask in which her life force had been kindled, while ordinary homunculi could not do that. Amoretta, of course, had a similar core, but Father had said she was built around the spirit of an angel, not a fairy. So maybe it was the nature spirit within Tahlea that recognized the garden's magic, not her homunculus senses.

"I'm sorry," she said, biting her lip. This was going all _wrong_! She'd been so happy to finally meet her sister, someone like herself, neither human nor spirit nor ordinary alchemical creation, and nothing had gone the way she'd expected. Father had warned her it might be like this, and yet Tahlea hadn't believed him, not really. He didn't understand what it was like to be so different from everyone around her, how no matter how much she might be loved or cared for there was always a certain distance that couldn't be overcome. The notion of meeting someone like herself at last, someone who knew and understood her feelings--better yet, that as a fellow creation of Father's Amoretta was actually _family_--Tahlea knew, just _knew_, that Amoretta would feel the same as she did.

Except that she didn't.

Were they that different inside? Was it a matter of being a fairy rather than an angel? Was it that Amoretta was older? Or was there something special about a romantic love that made things different, that defeated the loneliness? Or was it just that her troubles with Father ran that deeply, that they spoiled things?

"I don't think that you have anything to apologize for," Amoretta said. "I know that the garden is special because Lillet uses it to help support some of her experiments in glamour. I'm just not capable of feeling anything unusual about it without using magic."

"You can use magic?" Tahlea exclaimed. "I mean, human magic, to summon and command familiars?"

Amoretta nodded.

"I'm not really very good at it, but I can use a few basic Runes. I'm best in alchemy, of course."

"That's amazing! I can't use Runes at all!"

"I think it's because of my angel core. Devils, after all, can summon other devils through sorcery, so perhaps angels can exercise a similar power--the greater devils, are, after all, merely fallen angels."

"That makes sense. I have a fairy core, so I guess I wouldn't have that power."

"Or it might be blunted by your body, created from alchemy and so in opposition to your nature."

"That's a thought! I felt like I wanted to crawl out of my skin for the first month. It was _horrible_! Did you...?"

Amoretta shook her head.

"No, although everything was all new and strange to me. It wasn't uncomfortable in a physical sense, though."

Tahlea sighed.

"Another difference..."

"What did you say?"

She looked up at Amoretta.

"It's...it's just..." She sighed again. "I guess we really aren't all that much alike after all."

"Were...we supposed to be?"

"I thought so." She spotted a nearby stone bench and sat down, slumping forward with her elbows on her knees and her chin propped in her cupped palms. "It looks like I was the only one, though," she added glumly.

"Is it important, somehow?" Amoretta asked curiously.

Tahlea felt her stomach knot. She'd expected that Amoretta would understand her feelings. Explaining them in words to a seemingly unsympathetic stranger was a different thing altogether! She wasn't at all sure that she could bring herself to do it. It was so strange; Amoretta was so perfectly identical to her physically that it was like looking at her reflection in the mirror, but a reflection that was saying and doing different things than she was.

_I just don't understand! Why does it have to be like this?_ Tahlea thought plaintively, knotting her fingers in the hem of her tunic and twisting.

"I...it's just that..."

She couldn't. She just couldn't. You had to be able to trust someone to open up to them, and she didn't trust this twisted mirror of herself.

"It's all right," Amoretta said. "You can tell me when you want to, although I am curious."

Tahlea smiled faintly.

"You say what's on your mind so easily, Amoretta."

"Everyone says that. I think that more people should. I can understand that some things are private, but there's no reason to lie."

"Do you ever consider changing, because people expect it?" Tahlea asked curiously.

"I have, but I don't seem to be able to. It's what's natural to me, and at the heart of it I honestly believe that I'm right about how I should speak."

"I see." Perhaps that was the angel's influence again. Maybe that was the point. Tahlea and Amoretta's cores were, essentially, their souls, and wasn't it the soul that defined a person? Certainly they'd had shared experiences on account of their unique creation and identical bodies, but they were different inside, and the circumstances of their lives only emphasized that.

_So maybe,_ Tahlea thought,_ that makes "sister" a better definition of what we are than I'd thought._ Not sisters in the sense of twins or copies, but sisters like human sisters, born of shared parents but different people inside.

"Amoretta..." she began hesitantly, If she couldn't bring herself to share her heart, perhaps the older homunculus could? "Why...why is it that you dislike Father?"

"He isn't my father," Amoretta corrected her, but not harshly, not as any kind of comeback or conversational riposte. She said it simply but firmly, as one stating a plain truth. "He is only my creator."

Tahlea flinched at the blunt rejection.

"Amoretta, how can you say that?"

"There are two ways to be a father. On the one hand, one can be a natural male parent. In that way, a man is technically a father regardless of whether or not he acts to fill the role socially and emotionally. On the other hand a man can fill the role of a father out of love regardless of biological ties. Dr. Chartreuse was neither to me. To him, I was a laboratory experiment rather than a daughter. I was valued as a prized homunculus, not as Amoretta."

Tahlea gasped. Her surprise was not so much at the story--Father had explained some of this to her in admitting his failures--but at Amoretta's willingness to so easily and plainly share it. The other homunculus was clearly much braver than she was, to express her feelings directly, without humiliation.

"B-but a homunculus...we aren't complete without love!"

Amoretta nodded, and pressed her palm over her heart as she spoke.

"And so I was not, for the first 106 days of my existence." She closed her eyes, and a smile of utter bliss came over her face. "Then I met Lillet."

"Oh," Tahlea sighed. She didn't _quite_ understand, because she'd been loved by Father from the moment of her creation, but she did know how much she needed that love.

Amoretta opened her eyes.

"And so I'm here, with her, rather than at the lab."

Tahlea nodded.

"Was Father angry that you left?"

"No, but I think that it hurt him. I was his greatest creation, and I had rejected him. He didn't try to fight me about it, though. He knew that he couldn't provide me with what I needed and did put my well-being ahead of his experiments. I was very grateful to him for that."

Tahlea blinked.

"So you don't resent him, them?"

Amoretta sighed.

"We parted on good terms, without ill feeling. I was happy in my life with Lillet, and Creator didn't seem capable of giving me what I needed. It would be silly to hold against him that he couldn't do something outside his own nature. It would be like resenting a robin because it couldn't swim or a cat because it couldn't fly."

She did not have to explain further for Tahlea to understand.

"But...it isn't outside his nature," she said in a very small voice. "Father does love me."

Amoretta nodded.

"When Lillet told me about you, that Dr. Chartreuse considered you to be an important part of his family, I was terribly envious." She smiled faintly, ruefully. "I wanted to tear his hair out, or yours. The only time I've been more furious is when Lillet puts herself in danger."

Tahlea flinched again.

"Don't worry, Tahlea; I've had time to deal with those feelings. It's stupid to hold it against you that you've had something that I didn't when it wasn't your fault. And jealousy is a silly emotion that doesn't help anyone." Amoretta suddenly blushed and her lips curved into a secretive little smile, making Tahlea wonder just what she was thinking of. Certainly nothing about this conversation could provoke a smile like that, so it must have been some memory.

She wished that she had more memories. It was hard having the intellect and emotional maturity of an adult but only a year's worth of experience.

"I'm still annoyed with Creator, though. It was one thing when I believed that he _couldn't_ love me. It's another entirely to learn that he can love, but failed to learn it until after it could have made a difference for me."

"Do you wish that he had?"

Amoretta shook her head emphatically.

"Do you mean, would I change the past? No. If I hadn't been whom I was at that time, then Lillet might never have fallen in love with me, and I'd rather die right now than lose a minute of the time I've spent with her. But those first hundred and six days..." She clutched her fists. "You're a homunculus, too, Tahlea, so perhaps you can tell what I'm feeling."

"Ah!" _Yes, finally some point of common ground between us!_

"I know that you haven't experienced it yourself, and perhaps it's different for you, who was loved in your creation, but try to imagine it. Never being loved. Having no reason nor right to exist. I could move and talk, think and feel, try to learn and understand the world around me, but I was just a shell, almost an object. I had nothing within to sustain me."

Hearing her say that struck Tahlea to the core in a way that it hadn't from Father. He knew the _acts_, but Amoretta knew the _consequences_. For her sake, Tahlea tried to imagine the unimaginable.

She found it all too easy.

_Is this what being homunculi together means?_ she thought as a sudden shudder racked her. _Being able to understand each other's pain?_

When she looked up at Amoretta again, it was through a blur of moisture.

"I'm so sorry," she said in a voice barely more than a whisper.

Amoretta sighed.

"No, I am. I didn't mean to hurt you, but I wanted you to know why I'm not inclined to be particularly kind to Dr. Chartreuse."

"But...you're welcoming us into your home."

"It's for Lillet," she said as if it explained everything, which of course it did. Amoretta's devotion to her lover seemed even more intense than Tahlea's to Father--because it was romantic love? Because she'd had to find it on her own after having been without? Or just because she was Amoretta and that was her nature as an individual?

"You really do love her, don't you," Tahlea said wistfully, not really as a question.

"I'm blessed that she's in my life," Amoretta said, showing no hesitation in sharing it with a near-stranger. "She's everything to me."

Tahlea smiled. She was glad for her sister and for Father's sake as well that despite her beginnings Amoretta had been able to find happiness.

"I'm happy you have her."

Amoretta regarded her curiously.

"Why are you happy, Tahlea? You don't even know me."

"Because we're sisters! Or...at least I felt like we ought to be."

"Oh?"

Tahlea clenched her fingers in her hem again, but this time, perhaps buoyed by Amoretta's own willingness to talk, she found the courage to share what she felt.


	5. Lillet II

"There's no way of getting around it, is there?" Lillet admitted with a dejected sigh.

"I believe not," Dr. Chartreuse agreed.

It had been a less than enlightening three days for the two master magicians, days spent going back and forth between library and laboratory, poring through texts and conducting experiments for eighteen hours a day, occasionally remembering to stop for food and generally worrying their respective homunculi that they should take better care of themselves.

Amoretta had finally put her foot down, exercising a lover's prerogative by virtually dragging Lillet out of the library for an hour-long soak in scented bath water followed by a half-hour massage that left Lillet all but melted into an utterly relaxed puddle (its complete absence of erotic content going far to convince her of how right Amoretta was about her working too hard). She had then found herself dressed in fresh clothes and plunked unceremoniously across a table from Dr. Chartreuse.

"There!" Amoretta had declared when Gaff set a steaming bowl of soup, a cold collation, and a salad liberally strewn with garden-fresh vegetables in front of Lillet. "You can talk shop if you want, but if I come back and find any leftovers, I'm locking the library door and hiding the key."

"Yes, Mom," Lillet had responded, and got a smirk and a kiss on the cheek in response. But she had to admit that her lover's methods were both effective and necessary. With good food in front of her and a cup of tea in hand, she found that her head was clearer than it had been in days.

So, of course, she and Dr. Chartreuse were indeed talking shop.

"It appears to be a fundamental truth that sexual reproduction requires the elements of both male and female. What we do in creating life through alchemy is essentially the magical equivalent of asexual reproduction. Such techniques will not permit two women to conceive a child together in the sense that you desire."

Lillet nodded and sighed.

"Yes, it seems the male element is necessary." She drummed her fingers on the table. "Yet I can't see _why_. The end result is either male or female, not both. If male and female elements went in, indeed are necessary for the process, then why aren't they both expressed in the end result?"

"A number of the ancient philosophers suggested that the male and female do battle, with the stronger elements being passed on in the child. Absurd, of course. A simple examination of heredity and breeding shows that. How often do we see a son with physical qualities of his mother or a daughter with those of her father? Clearly it isn't an all-or-nothing affair."

Dr. Chartreuse handled the cutlery with careful, almost delicate gestures despite the clumsiness of his paw-like hands. It was almost fascinating to watch how he coped with the day-to-day tasks made more difficult by his curse, Lillet thought.

"You don't have to tell me about breeding. I did grow up on a farm, after all, and anyone who's raised animals knows that the traits of both parents affect the offspring. That's why I want this child to be Amoretta's as well as mine. I want it to have part of her as well, not just her love as a mother but...to be a continuation of us, an expression of our love for each other."

She stopped suddenly and looked Dr. Chartreuse square in the eyes.

"Wait a minute; that doesn't even make sense," she said.

"It seemed quite clear to me. I understood what you said about how you want a child to be of both of you. Indeed, most parents do."

Lillet shook her head.

"No, not that part. I meant everything I said about that. The part that doesn't make sense is the one about mixing both parents' traits."

"But that's also correct. No doubt there is some rule of natural law which determines which traits are passed on, but in any case the child clearly is a mixture of the attributes of the parents."

"But male and female are required."

"Yes, that's--ahhh."

Lillet smiled at him.

"You see it, don't you? There's no priority, no benefit, no weight to male or female over the other in picking the qualities to be passed on. They're weighed equally in the making. Some of the traits themselves seem to have greater resilience--like red hair, for example--but there's no partiality to picking the father's over the mother's or the other way around."

"So you're hypothesizing..."

"What if the need for both sexes is merely _mechanical_, like...a key in a lock." Her thoughts seemed to be crashing wildly into one another, tumbling pell-mell through her head in their need to find expression. It was only later that she realized that she'd made a fairly obvious double entendre with her metaphor, but luckily she was talking with Dr. Chartreuse, who completely ignored it--indeed, who probably hadn't even realized it was there given his decidedly asexual nature.

"Mmm?" he murmured, ears pricking. "Please explain, Miss Lillet."

She popped a piece of cheese into her mouth, deliberately forcing herself to slow down and order her thoughts.

"We believe that the male seed combines with its feminine equivalent within the woman to create the new child, merging elements of each, correct?" she said after swallowing.

"Quite," Dr. Chartreuse agreed, his massive lion's head bobbing once up and down. "Our recent experiments have verified it."

"That emphasizes equality--duality--a perfect balance. Yet the expression of heredity is not a process perfectly balanced. A random factor exists. That's an inconsistency."

Understanding gleamed in Dr. Chartreuse's amber eyes.

"Ah, I see! When a process is inconsistent with its own nature, then it is a sure sign that it is not _a_ process, but more than one combined, a signal to the researcher that he is over-broad in his assumptions."

"Right! So try this for a hypothesis: the male's seed carried the elements of heredity from the father to the mother, like a boat carries cargo. It docks"--_Ugh, another double entendre!_--"and offloads that cargo, which combines with the elements of heredity from the mother in a second, separate process to create the child."

Again the great shaggy head nodded.

"This sounds like a reasonable, rational idea," Dr. Chartreuse agreed. "It will require testing, of course."

"Definitely! There's no way I'm playing games with my baby using an unproven idea."

"Ah, so you have an idea for a practical application of your hypothesis?"

It was Lillet's turn to nod.

"Yes! At least, I think so. Using basic glamour magic, we can tell when a woman--in this case me--is fertile, and if we're impatient we can actually bring on that state with slightly more advanced magic."

"Quite," Dr. Chartreuse agreed. "These are the sort of matters a village wisewoman addresses regularly, using the potions and such of ritual glamour. Why, wasn't that the subject of the grimoire you yourself compiled three years ago?"

Lillet grinned.

"Uh-huh. I thought it would be a good idea to study those kinds of common magical traditions, first to separate out what was ritual magic, what was natural herbalism without a magical element, and what was pure superstition. Then, when I found what was truly magical, I developed Rune equivalents for them to make them safer and easier."

"I read the copy you sent to Gammel. It had little application to my own field of study, but it was fine work; for his part, Gammel could not have been prouder of his student."

"That's what he said in his letter," Lillet said, blushing.

"In any event, then what?"

"Well, we extract the living seed from a male," she continued her explanation, and her blush only got worse, a fiercer red. Dr. Chartreuse might not think of the process in any other way--indeed, he probably _would_ view the step as "extracting seed" without any erotic overtones at all--but Lillet was a sexually active young woman and even if that _particular_ process wasn't part of her routine she couldn't discuss it with complete scientific detachment.

The lion-headed alchemist regarded her with a sort of pity and concern, understanding that she had the problem even if he couldn't quite sympathize. He knew well enough that others felt passions and desires even if he himself never felt them strongly enough to overrule his intellect. _This is one time I wish I was more like him!_

"Then," she hurried on, "using alchemy, we expunge the elements of heredity from the seed, then replace it with similar material taken from the body of the one whose traits we want to pass on--in the final instance, of course, I mean Amoretta. Finally, the altered semen is inserted into the female--"

She broke off again, cheeks flaming. _Whatever else happens, I am _so_ having Amoretta do _that_ job! It's embarrassing enough imagining her doing it, let alone anyone else!_

"Whereupon nature takes its course," Dr. Chartreuse finished up for her, sparing Lillet the trouble of untangling her tongue. "Presuming that your hypothesis is correct, then it should work. Furthermore, it provides a suitable experiment for the root principle as well as for itself. Should you be incorrect about semen being only a vessel, then eliminating what you call the 'elements of heredity' from it should render it sterile."

"Yes, except that I don't really know what the 'elements of heredity' are or how they function. Admittedly we're using magic instead of natural science so we _should_ be able to fudge through, but alchemy is the worst of the four types at reading the magician's intent and making the outcome reflect that intent. It has to be alchemy, though, because we're manipulating the natural law in an unnatural way. Glamour can't help with that, and of course Necromancy is useless in the conception of life."

"Hmm. I dislike mentioning it, but sorcery may be better suited than alchemy to the task. A properly bound devil would fulfill your wish and do so according to your intent, and sorcery includes a broad power over physical transformations."

Lillet shook her head emphatically.

"No; I'd rather work with alchemy."

"I'm relieved to hear it, but why?"

"On the one hand, it's like you said, Dr. Chartreuse: a _properly bound_ devil. If the binding isn't done right or the devil is just too strong to _be_ fully bound, then it can carry out the wish in a way that fulfills the letter but not necessarily the intent, and given how complex the process is and how little we really understand the technical details there's a lot of room for it to be warped. That's dangerous."

"And on the other hand?"

Lillet sighed.

"I've played fast and loose with sorcery in the past, I admit. Really, I've done more in that area than a reputable magician should, and I've been able to get away with it sometimes because of cleverness, sometimes because I have power that weaker magicians lack, and sometimes because of sheer luck. I know myself well enough that I'll probably do it again in the future if I see the need. But I _will not_ have a devil involved anywhere in the conception of my baby!"

"A wise precaution, I must say."

Lillet shook her head.

"It's not about wisdom, Dr. Chartreuse. It's about love. I'll risk that kind of taint for myself if it seems like the risk is worth it, but not for Amoretta and not for our child. I can't be rational and weigh risks versus benefits where it concerns them."

"Interesting," he mused. "This child does not even exist--indeed, we have not even established with certainty that it even _can_ exist, and yet you think of it in terms of love."

"Well, of course I do. If I can't find it in myself to love the idea of a baby, then I shouldn't try to be a mother. I wouldn't bring a child into the world not knowing if I could love it."

Dr. Chartreuse hung his head.

"You shame me, Miss Lillet. That is precisely the mistake I made with Amoretta."

She was glad he'd gotten the message; she'd chosen her words purposefully to raise the implication. The old Dr. Chartreuse, she thought, probably wouldn't have even caught her meaning.

It was a good sign.

"You said that you intended to make a fresh start with her," Lillet suggested. "Maybe you should start now. I can still get started on our next experiments by myself." She looked down at the still half-full plate in front of her, sighed, and picked up her fork. "Once I finish eating, that is."


	6. Amoretta II

"Checkmate," Amoretta said, sliding a bishop into position.

"What, again?" Tahlea exclaimed. "That's six in a row! What kind of mean big sister destroys me in six straight games of chess?"

"What's the point of playing if you're not going to try your hardest?" she asked.

"Do you beat Lillet like this?"

"I've never won a game of chess with Lillet."

Tahlea's eyes widened.

"Really? Not in all this time? Don't you play very much, then?"

"Once a week, sometimes twice."

"But that's over three hundred games!"

"Three hundred and eighty-nine, actually." She thought she would do something special if Lillet made it to four hundred. Since she knew her lover didn't keep count of the games it would make for a nice surprise.

"Amoretta, how can you play that many games of chess against someone and never win?"

"Lillet is an extremely good chess player. She thinks many moves in advance and she sets traps within traps, usually that don't even reveal themselves as such until ten or twelve moves after they spring."

"I bet! But that's not what I meant."

"Oh?" Amoretta was confused.

"I just don't understand why you'd keep playing if you knew that you're going to lose."

She shrugged.

"I like chess. It's fun to play."

"Isn't the point to win?"

"I'd be very happy if I did win, but I enjoy myself just playing the game, and also of course because I'm spending time with Lillet."

Tahlea nodded.

"That part I understand. It always feels best to spend time with Father no matter what we're doing. But doesn't she ever let you win?"

Amoretta smiled back, almost dreamily.

"She'd never do anything like that to me," she said confidently. It was something she knew in her heart, a deep and abiding trust in Lillet's love.

"_To_ you? You mean, as if you'd think it was a bad thing and she knows you'd think it so she wouldn't do it?" Tahlea tried to work her mind around the issue. "Wait!" she exclaimed just as Amoretta was about to elaborate, then clapped her hands happily. "I think I see! It's because it's a kind of lying, right, and you hate lying, even out of kindness. So it wouldn't _be_ kind to let you win now and again, and you'd be really hurt if you found out she had, and Lillet knows how you feel because she loves you and so cares about your opinions, and so that's why she keeps on beating you?"

Amoretta smiled brightly.

"That's it exactly."

Tahlea returned the smile.

"So! At last I'm getting to know you better."

Amoretta nodded.

"I'm glad."

"Me, too. I may have been wrong about there being some kind of automatic sympathy between us, but that doesn't mean we can't choose it on our own."

Again, Amoretta nodded. Tahlea was an interesting person, she'd decided. Though Amoretta herself wasn't as eager to acquire a sister for the sake of having one as the younger homunculus was, it was still a nice feeling to build ties of family, friendship, and love, and she enjoyed Tahlea's company. It was interesting, too, to see how they were alike and how different, because it gave insight into her own nature, what came from being a homunculus and what was unique to her own self. Having her there, though, made Amoretta think more about Dr. Chartreuse, and the relationship she should have had with her creator but didn't. Accepting Tahlea as a sister, in a way, was like drawing closer to that relationship.

"You seem to be having fun."

They both looked towards the voice, Tahlea's face lighting up with an expression Amoretta knew well; she showed it herself when reuniting with Lillet after being separated.

"Father!"

"Hello, Tahlea."

"Amoretta's teaching me how to lose at chess. Apparently she's an expert at it, but I'm a fast learner," she added impishly, "since I've succeeded in losing every time so far." The other two laughed at her sally.

"I'm glad that the two of you are getting along so well. But would you mind if I interrupted you, Tahlea? I'd like to speak with Amoretta for a bit."

"Oh. Oh, yes, of course!" she responded, smiling. "Good luck, Father." She hopped up from her seat and scurried towards the door. Chartreuse walked over to the chair she'd vacated and laid a hand on the back.

"May I?"

"Go ahead." Amoretta glanced at the door by which her sister had left. "She wished you good luck."

"Probably that's because she has a very good idea of why it is I want to speak with you." He took a seat.

"The timing is interesting, though." She smiled, divining the reason for the sudden approach when, she was sure, all his instincts were telling him to return to the lab. "Lillet is fond of meddling."

"She loves you very much, and doesn't like seeing you hurt by my folly."

"No, she wouldn't," Amoretta agreed.

He fished through his jacket pockets and took out his pipe. "May I?"

"Go ahead."

He filled the pipe's oversized bowl, lit the tobacco, and took a few experimental puffs. Her creator was nervous, Amoretta realized, perhaps not surprising given his nature. The intellect was his world; when dealing with emotion, he found himself on shaky ground. He wasn't the only nervous one, though.

_This is the man who should have been a father to me, who created this body I inhabit, this life I lead._

"I wronged you," he began, plunging in directly. They were very similar in that, creator and created. "I wronged you very badly."

"Yes," Amoretta agreed.

"You are blunt," he sighed.

"I'm not going to lie to you," she said.

He shook his head.

"No, of course not."

Chartreuse lifted his pipe to his lips, drew on it, then exhaled twin streams through his nose.

"I created you as an experiment. I wanted to make the ultimate homunculus--the perfect form of artificial life. I wanted to understand the secrets of creation and to improve on them, to reach up to Heaven and come to know the mind of God. I put the soul of an angel into the most perfect physical body I could craft."

Amoretta nodded, but did not interrupt.

"I was happy with you being who you were. Your lack of memory of your core's previous existence was a setback, but only a slight one. I learned many things from you, about the laws of life, the nature of souls...as an experiment you were priceless to me. But I was badly wrong."

Since she'd already agreed with that statement once, she did not repeat herself.

"I did not see you as a person. I denied your fundamental identity. Worse, I gave you a life in which your mere existence satisfied me. I gave you nothing to aspire to, no purpose to fulfill, and no love to support. Your creation was the pinnacle of my magical studies, and I did it thoughtlessly, without a care for your needs, only my own. I was no different than a man who sires a bastard child and walks away without accepting responsibility. No, I was worse, because your creation was an intentional act rather than an accident. I failed as a magician and as a man both.

He sighed heavily.

"It was not until you rejected your place with me to go with Lillet that I truly began to understand."

"You didn't fight me, though," Amoretta offered, being strictly honest. "You immediately accepted that she could give me what you could not and left me in her care."

He snorted.

"A small enough thing, that. Had I not rejected Opalneria just a few days before, I might have stood on my own pride and demanded that you return to the lab. Since I had just acted the part of the rejecting one, my own ego would not let me deny the justice of that position. I had no real conception of what love meant to you. How could I, when I had no real conception of what love was at all?"

"I think you would have done the right thing, at the least as a scientist if not a man." She certainly hoped so. Amoretta didn't want to taint the greatest kindness he'd shown her with thoughts that it was an accident of clashing facets of pride.

"Perhaps." Wryly he added, "It at least saved me the humiliation of being defeated in battle being added to the humiliation of rejection."

"Battle?"

"Oh, yes; your Miss Lillet was quite ready to protect your right to your own life, and I have no illusions--now--about how that would have turned out."

Amoretta thought of denying that, but then remembered something Lillet had said right after that conversation: "I don't want to fight any more teachers." _She_ certainly had been thinking along the lines of a potential battle. _Lillet would have fought Chartreuse for my sake?_ Even though she wouldn't have wanted to see such a fight, the idea that Lillet had been ready to do so still gave her a feeling of warmth.

"No," Chartreuse went on, "I knew nothing of love, then. In my life I had rejected it in favor of pure intellect; I believed it to be a ghost of biological passions. A parent's desire to protect a child, a child's desire for that protection, an adult's desire for a mate. I didn't realize that _love_ is something else, beyond those basic instincts. You once told me that you were far from holy wisdom, but you shared some with me nonetheless. Only because of you and Lillet could I realize that without love for and from others, our lives are empty. Without that knowledge I had failed badly as a creator, able to do nothing better than to abdicate my responsibility in another's favor."

He shook his head sadly.

"I can only offer you my deepest apologies, in the hope that you will permit me in the future to be, if not a parent, then at least a creator capable of understanding and fulfilling what that means."

And there it was, just like that. He'd come to the end of his recital of his sins, laid his heart bare before Amoretta in the spirit of repentance, and yet the warmth she'd gained from her thoughts of Lillet shattered beneath the sudden coldness she felt.

_Because he'd missed the worst one of all._

Was it possible, she wondered, that even _now_ he _still_ didn't understand the enormity of what he'd done to her? Oh, yes, she could believe it. As he'd said, love and emotion were foreign to him, things he'd had to be taught slowly and haltingly as adults learn things rather than absorbing them with a child's swiftness. But that fact was no consolation to her.

Amoretta clenched her fists. She wanted to slap his face, to throw something, to scream aloud in fury.

She did none of these things.

Instead, she rose to her feet, slowly and gracefully, and told him what he'd done.

"Do you have any idea how you made me feel, Creator?"

He shook his head.

"No; it is impossible for me to truly conceive what it could be like, to exist without purpose, a thing unloved--"

"No, not that," she cut off his pointless comments, pointless since they related to the wrong topic entirely. "I...understand that. You did not make a _choice_ to wrong me in that way; it was the inevitable result of your nature as it existed then. You had made of yourself a creature of pure intellect and you could do nothing else. A stone cannot bleed; a machine cannot love."

He flinched from her, the words biting.

"We parted on good terms because I understood your lack, and because you understood that I needed something more than you could give. It was not loving, but at least amicable.

"But then you learned. You came to know what it was you lacked, to know in your heart how you'd wronged me, all just as you've said here today. I...was glad to learn that. Really, I was, not just for myself but for your sake, too. But I do admit that I _was_ happy for myself, because I thought...I thought that you might finally be able to care something for me. Do you understand what that's like? Can you imagine, say, a person that has lost their sight, who has managed to live a full and fulfilling life without it, nonetheless offered a chance to get it back?" It struck her that for most people her creator's own curse would have been a perfect metaphor, except that he himself did not truly consider it to be a handicap.

"I..."

"Except that in the next breath, I was told that it _hadn't_ happened," she slashed at him with her voice. "You'd made no attempt to come to me, to offer me the consideration you should have shown if you'd been able. Instead, you'd become the great experimenter again. You'd shrugged off the failed prototype and moved on to the new, improved model." She jabbed a finger at the door Tahlea had left through. "You made it very clear that I wasn't a person to you at all, just one step along the experimental process! _Do you have any idea how that made me feel?_" she repeated.

"No, I--"

"Only now, now that you've tried and tested your theory about how love would improve your homunculus research, do you come around to me, and you don't even realize the nature of how you've wronged me." She smacked her hand against the hearth, her feelings demanding some kind of violent outlet. "You're just as ignorant as you ever were, _Creator_!"

He stared at her, his leonine amber eyes full of pain and shock. Clearly he'd hoped for reconciliation, perhaps been prepared for rejection, but hadn't expected this. Not an attack. Amoretta was sorry, sorry to cause pain; sorry for Tahlea, whom she was genuinely coming to like; sorry for Lillet, who clearly wanted a happy ending for her lover's family relationship. Her feelings, though, were what they were, and they weren't going to change or go away.

"For what it's worth," she said, perhaps to soften the blow, or to ease her own guilt, or just because it was as much the honest truth as the hurt and rejection had been, "you have my forgiveness for not loving me, for your mistakes in my creation. You always have."

And she left, then, without another word being spoken.


	7. Grimalkin and Chartreuse

"Come back!"

The shout roused Grimalkin from his doze. Amoretta's familiar was a minor devil, a creature of sorcery in the shape of a cat. She hadn't summoned him in the usual way of familiars; Dr. Chartreuse had been the one to call him, but Amoretta who had adopted him when she was new-made. It was strange, he thought, how she'd touched him. Just being nearby to her felt oddly fulfilling; being held by her made him feel relaxed and safe, as if all was well with the world and nothing could ever be wrong.

He was aware that this effect most likely stemmed from the presence of the angel within Amoretta, that it's holiness called to his own nature. This was only logical; the purity of an angel's spirit encased in a physical, mortal existence vulnerable to the added temptations thereof was itself a temptation almost beyond bearing to devils. What was not quite so logical was the effect her presence had had on him over the long term. Yes, grimalkins were like dragons, creatures drawn from the fringes of the underworld, more of chaos than evil, tainted rather than corrupt, but even so...

Grimalkin yawned. If he was associated with a deadly sin, it was probably sloth.

"Oh, darn it, don't run under there."

It was the voice that had awakened him, the same voice as his mistress's but coming from a different person. There was no angel in this one, only a natural spirit not too far from humanity for all that their bodies were identical. Suddenly a black mouse bolted from under a coffee table straight towards Grimalkin; obviously this was what she was chasing and the cause for his interrupted nap. Irritated, he raised his paw and unsheathed his claws. Then, he furled the claws again and he slapped the paw down, pinning the mouse's tail and holding it, unable to run.

"'Tis here, Tahlea. I have your mouse," he said.

As he'd been thinking...the effect Amoretta's presence had on him.

"Oh, thank you!" Tahlea scampered over and retrieved the frightened mouse. "Naughty Petey! Just think what would have happened if this had been a real cat?" she chided it.

"A pet?" Grimalkin asked curiously.

"Yes. He's one of the experimental mice Father and Lillet have been working with. Once they're born and verified healthy, though, they aren't needed and would just live out their lives in the lab, so I adopted a couple as pets. Thanks for catching Petey...um, what _is_ your name?"

"Grimalkin."

"I know you're a grimalkin, but what's your name?"

"No, my name _'tis_ Grimalkin."

Tahlea raised an eyebrow.

"Really? Are you the first of your kind or something?"

He shook his head.

"No, 'tis not such a prideful thing. Indeed, 'twas only that your sister 'twas very young indeed when she named me."

"Well, it's a better name than 'Spot' or 'Whiskers,' even if it is kind of obvious," Tahlea allowed. She slipped the mouse into a tunic pocket. "Thanks again for your help."

Grimalkin waved a paw dismissively.

"It was no trouble. Am I not part of this family?"

He realized with some surprise that he was speaking the truth.

-X X X-

"Another failure!" Lillet exclaimed. For a moment it looked as if she wanted to hurl the test tube across the laboratory, but she seemed to master the impulse and placed the tube in the appropriate rack.

Since his fairly dramatic inability to resolve things properly with Amoretta, Chartreuse had sought to move past it by throwing himself into the work. Alchemy he understood; it was clear-cut, with precise rules to follow that could be deduced from experimentation. Human relationships were so variable, so dependent not just on the individuals involved but also on time, place, and circumstance.

"That's five times," Lillet said, "with three separate semen samples from two different sources. Something is wrong somewhere."

Chartreuse nodded.

"I agree. Impurity in the sample or an accident in our execution of the process is highly unlikely."

"Let's take it from the top. It worked fine with the mice. We took a blood sample from female black and brown mice and the seed from male white mice. Through glamour, we preserved the seed and verified that it was still viable, capable of engendering life. Then through alchemy we overwrote what was in the seed with the qualities of the blood sample, then impregnated female white mice with it. The result was healthy, baby black or brown mice, which could not have come naturally from two white-furred parents."

"Thereby proving the viability of your theory."

She shook her head.

"But it doesn't work for humans. Every time we try to make human seed conform to Amoretta's blood sample, it becomes inert, unable to engender life."

"There must be a reason for it. Humans and mice are not so different."

Lillet's head snapped up and around.

"Say that again."

"Humans and mice are not so different? Both are, after all, animals, differentiated not so much by our physical beings as by our minds, our souls."

"But that's it. Humans and mice _are_ different. Here, give me two more semen samples, human."

Chartreuse divided and measured it into two more test tubes, which he passed over to Lillet.

"What are you going to do?" he wondered.

"I'm going to correct an experimental flaw. We did tests with the mice to make sure it worked, but we never tested on human samples."

She took a pin and pierced her fingertip, then squeezed a few drops of blood out with a pipette.

"If you'd do the honors, Doctor?"

He nodded, accepting her courtesy. This particular Rune was his own innovation, the product of several days of research into which he'd thrown himself after Amoretta's rejection. Chartreuse sketched it out with clean, crisp movements, making it blaze with golden light on the laboratory floor. It was a difficult challenge, to make the elements of heredity, a biological construct he had only the barest understanding of, within the seed comport to those contained in the sample of Lillet's blood, all without damaging or disrupting the physical structure of the semen itself, which was a second process they only sketchily understood. That he'd made it work was a remarkable achievement, but one that brought him cold comfort. Mere intellectual glory could not satisfy a need driven by human emotions.

It had been more comfortable, he thought, to be a child of intellect.

_No, not comfortable. Just...easier._

"There. It's done."

Lillet nodded, then took the tube. The Rune that she conjured was the pale green of glamour, the magic of natural spirits, the expression of life as it existed in the world. What better magic to determine if seed was fertile, capable of getting a woman with child?

"It's fine," she said with a sigh. "It's not the process, which leaves only one possibility that I can think of."

They understood each other perfectly; there was no need to articulate it. The test to verify was easy, too; they merely repeated the experiment with the second sample, but using mouse blood rather than Lillet's. As they'd expected, it failed.

"That's it, then," Lillet said with a sigh. "It's not going to work for Amoretta."

Chartreuse nodded.

"She's not human," he agreed. "She appears human, externally, but her biology is of a completely different species--more than that, a completely different order of life. The elements of heredity in her are simply not compatible with those of a person."

Lillet sagged, then sat down on one of the stools.

"I can barely believe it," she said quietly. "I was so sure that it would work." Tears were forming in her eyes; he could see the glint of wetness in them. "But it won't, will it?"

"Miss Lillet..."

His stomach began to quiver. Emotional scenes, human suffering, these confused and terrified him.

"I've always been able to rely on magic," she said. "So many of the good things in my life it's brought me--my chance to better myself and my family, being able to protect everyone from the Archmage and Grimlet, helping people through my job, or just making my life easier. Magic even created Amoretta." She sniffled. "I thought...I just assumed that magic could solve this problem for me, too. But it can't, can it?" She looked up at him with tear-stained eyes, and he had no idea what to do. Haltingly, slowly, he went to her and laid his hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he said plainly. "I wish that there had been something more I could have done."

"I know you tried your best," she said.

"Shall I...call for Amoretta?"

Lillet sniffled again, then nodded.

"Please."

He rang the bell, summoning a servant whom he sent for the homunculus. She came quickly--very quickly, given the size of the house--but each moment still felt like an eternity as he sat with a woman who teetered on the edge of a full-blown emotional breakdown. She held on, though, until Amoretta burst through the door.

"Lillet? Creator? _Lillet_, what's _wrong_?" The last burst from her as she saw Lillet's shaken condition. The sight of her lover seemed to serve as a trigger; the magician flung herself into the other girl's arms and buried her face against Amoretta's shoulder.

"It's all gone wrong, Amoretta!" she wailed. "We thought--we thought we'd figured it out, and it--it _does_ work, but not...not for..."

"Not for us?" Amoretta said softly. Her arms had closed around Lillet, one at the small of her back while her other hand stroked the crying woman's hair in smooth reassuring strokes.

Any further responses were rendered unintelligible by the storm of choking sobs that followed. Chartreuse stood back, unsure of what to do, whether he should try to edge past them or if that would be more disturbing for Lillet than his remaining there. It was astonishing to him how the normally controlled and calm Lillet--a woman who did not quail in the face of devils--had been so affected, as if consumed with grief. He was also shocked by how Amoretta's presence had seemed to set off the complete breakdown. He'd sent for Amoretta out of the belief that Lillet would need her support, but it seemed to have just made things that much worse.

Only belatedly, as he watched how Amoretta cradled and comforted Lillet, did Chartreuse realize that he had things backwards. It wasn't that the emotional storm had been triggered by Amoretta's arrival. Rather, it had been present all along, and Lillet had been holding it back. She'd just stopped fighting it when her lover had arrived, because she trusted Amoretta to be there to support her.

Love again. There seemed to be nothing of late that did not center around it, and the look Amoretta gave him over Lillet's shoulder told him frankly that she felt he had failed again. When the homunculus was finally able to draw the weeping Lillet from the room, Chartreuse decided that he should follow the example they'd set.

He went in search of Tahlea.


	8. Tahlea II

Tahlea was going to miss the garden. The profusion of green, growing things, the beauty of flowers and the practicality of herbs made her happy in a way that the cold stone of the Silver Star Tower and the alchemical fires of her father's lab could not. Yet at the same time she found herself missing the Magic Academy. While it did not have many things that the Blan-Virgine residence held, it possessed that nebulous quality known as _home_, that sense of a place where one's soul fitted.

_Perhaps Professor Gammel can help start a garden like this at home_, she thought. It would be a comfort to many of the Glamour familiars that had been summoned there. _If Father recommended it..._

She was caught up in her plans when the dull tread of feet in the path drew her attention. Tahlea turned, and was shocked to see the drooping figure of her father entering the small clearing. Misery was self-evident on the leonine face; his entire body seemed to be weighed down by some massive burden.

"Father, what's wrong?" burst from her lips at once; before she could even think of the words she'd already said them.

"I've failed," he said, his voice dull. "I've failed her again. As a creator, as a father, now even as an alchemist, I've failed her in every way."

There as no need to ask whom he meant. Tahlea took his hand, holding the big, ungainly paw between hers.

"Is it the experiments, Father? I thought they were going well."

He nodded.

"So did I. So did Lillet." He glanced around, noted a nearby stone bench, and dropped to it rather than sat. "Our fundamental theory was perfect. As you know, we were able to produce perfectly healthy litters of baby mice that express the traits of two females and not the male that contributed the seed. So long as one has access to a master alchemist--the Rune is both difficult and complex, beyond the ability of most to learn or cast--it is possible for two women to have a natural child of their own."

"Then what's wrong? That sounds like a great discovery!"

"It is, it is...but it neglects a fundamental consideration when we apply it to our _specific_ goal. A mouse is not a dog, a dog is not a man. This method transcends...no, subverts would be a better word...the need for the male gender. It says nothing to the problem of species."

"Species? Then, do you mean your method failed because Amoretta isn't human like Lillet?"

He sighed heavily.

"Yes, exactly. When we attempted to conform the elements of heredity in human seed to those within Amoretta, it failed. Indeed, I cannot even be certain that a homunculus possesses those elements. Her biology and yours were created through magic, conforming externally to the idea of a perfect female form, but God creates internally, building up from the smallest piece of matter to the largest so that each time we believe we have plumbed the depths of a natural process we find another operating within it. You are not only a different order of life, but one founded on utterly different principles.

"And so again I fail her!"

With sudden anger he beat his fist on his muscular thigh.

"Am I cursed for my folly? Is this God's punishment on me for my supreme arrogance?" He raised his face to the sky. "I tore an angel's spirit from Heaven and sought to know the secrets of God. How is mine not the sin of Adam?"

"Father!" Tahlea snapped sharply. He flinched as her voice struck him, then turned to her. She sat down beside him, resting her hand on his broad shoulder. "Stop it. Even I know better than that."

"Tahlea?"

"Whatever you've done, whatever mistakes you've made, the things that separate you from Amoretta are the mistakes of a person. Why, I volunteered to let you use my spirit as the core for this new life you've made for me. How do you know it wasn't the same for the angel within Amoretta? I know her well enough now to know that she isn't unhappy in her present existence any more than I am."

It seemed so obvious to her. The problems Father had with Amoretta were not made by the alchemist but by the man. She hadn't understood the issues at first because her perspective had been so different and limited, but in coming to know Amoretta and building a bond with her she had been able to appreciate where Father had gone wrong.

"It isn't just you, either," she went on. "Amoretta isn't perfect. She's a person like you or me. _I_ don't see why she holds it against you that you made me before trying to repair your relationship with her. If you hadn't tried at all that would be different, but she's wrong in thinking you had to _experiment_ with love before putting it into practice with her." She thought a bit, then added, "And even if you _did_ put this theory to the test with me, isn't that just a compliment to her? That you recognized that it was important to know your own feelings and what they were capable of before taking a chance on hurting her further?" She shook her head firmly. "It's not just you. She was hurt badly by the man you _were_, so she can't fully see you for the man that you _are_ the way I can."

"Tahlea..." His yellow-amber eyes brimmed with emotion. "I...I don't know what to say..."

She took his hand between hers again and smiled.

"I just don't want to see you blaming yourself for more than is your fault."

He smiled at her.

"When did you get so clever?"

"Well, I have had nearly a month to think things over," she pointed out.

"A month? Then Amoretta talked to you about what she said to me?"

Tahlea blushed faintly.

"Actually I...was listening at the door."

"Then, have you expressed these sentiments to her already?"

Tahlea shook her head.

"No, I don't have the right to pass judgment on her. If she asks I'll tell her my opinion, but...we're not close enough yet for me to intrude on something so private."

"Ah, but you and I are?"

"Yes, exactly," she agreed, beaming. "You're my father."

He smiled at her and squeezed her hand.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome?"

The alchemist chuckled softly.

"You are a great comfort to me, Tahlea, not for your words alone but also that you give me hope for myself." He took a deep breath. "Nonetheless, the fact remains that I have a great deal to make up to Amoretta, and if she takes things too strongly from me, then it is because she has suffered from my neglect before."

Tahlea didn't answer; her father was right and she didn't want to make things worse by reaffirming it.

"No, the truth is that she has a claim on me, one I badly want to repay. I was hoping that by helping her to have a child with Lillet, I might balance the scales somewhat."

"To bring her a special and unique happiness?"

"As I once brought her an equally unique form of suffering," he agreed.

"I didn't--" _Didn't I?_ She was on her father's side, but that didn't mean being blind to his mistakes. It was so easy for Tahlea to sympathize with her sister, understanding the nature of what she'd endured in a way that not even Lillet and Chartreuse could. But she also recognized how the father she knew wasn't the same man as he'd once been. She wanted the two of them to resolve their differences, not keep hurting each other because the past made their present interactions clumsy and full of ill feelings.

"Father," she began again, "I know that you want to help Amoretta. Is there no way that you can overcome this problem?"

He shook his head.

"Alchemy is the science of manipulating the natural laws. In God's creation, those laws work together to create the environment of the entire world, from the sun's light to the wind and weather to the biology of living things. Alchemy focuses on certain particular parts of those laws to gain an advantage or achieve a goal for the alchemist, but it does not necessarily cause a creation that fits well with the world as a whole. Most alchemical creations are excellent at one specific thing--better than can be found in nature--but deeply flawed in other ways."

Tahlea had heard variations on the same speech many times in the past, but did not quite understand its relevance.

"Yes, Father?" she prompted.

"Ah, I was not particularly clear, was I? What I mean to say is just that Amoretta, like you, is simply incompatible with the concept of reproduction. Creatures in nature, plants and animals both, always have a way to produce further generations, but a homunculus's mere existence is a marvel all on its own. Not only must any solution to the problem transcend the basic issue of gender, and the further difficulty of species, but the fundamental nature of a homunculus as a one-time creation of magic, complete in and of itself. I simply cannot imagine how to overcome that basic reality."

"I see."

The idle thought drifted through Tahlea's mind that she might one day be placed in Amoretta's position. If she ever found a romantic love for herself, would she want children? It wasn't impossible. Though in Amoretta's case she believed that it was Lillet who truly yearned for a baby and that Amoretta was neither particularly in favor of nor against it on her own behalf. Even so, knowing her own nature as well as her sister's, it was easy for Tahlea to believe the elder homunculus was deeply hurt by this failure.

"The best thing I ever did for Amoretta," Chartreuse reported, "was to allow her to live her own life as a person outside the lab. I had wanted to help with this project especially because it would mean helping to fulfill the dreams of that life."

"What do you mean?"

He looked a bit embarrassed at that. It was quite remarkable, Tahlea thought, how his very inhuman face could so convey shades of human emotion. Then again, he was the first face she had learned to read in her short existence.

"It's pride, I think...a pride I didn't even realize that I was feeling until now, when faced with failure."

"Pride, Father?"

"The pride of self-justification. Do you see? The more she thrives in her life with Lillet, the easier it is for me to think, 'See? This is where she belongs. I was right to let her go.' And...the easier it is to dismiss my own guilt on how I'd wronged her by saying that she could never be that happy or fulfilled with me--that even though I'd been wrong in my actions, I'd brought about the right results."

"But that isn't just pride. You _want_ Amoretta to be happy. You've never wanted anything different from her. Even the person you used to be, the one I've never known, always wanted that but just didn't know how to understand what she needed. That isn't the same thing as you're saying at all!"

"I wish I could agree with you, but..." he replied, his voice heavy.

Tahlea let out her breath with a sharp, frustrated sound.

"Stop it! You've always been a good father to me from the day I was created. You aren't the kind of person who could be so selfish. You've been here working hard for nearly a month not because of pride but because you wanted to help Amoretta." _Well, and because it's a fascinating intellectual problem, but I won't mention that right now._ Tahlea did not quite have her sister's fierce devotion to _complete_ honesty. "And Lillet is a colleague and former student, isn't she? So you wanted to do something nice for her as well. You didn't have bad motives and you didn't do anything wrong. Things just didn't work out."

He smiled at her.

"Thank you, Tahlea. I...I'm glad I came to talk to you. You've been a great comfort to me."

"I love you, Father," she said simply, and it was true. Just because her nature made her dependent on _his_ love didn't mean that she didn't love him back. She let go of his hand, wrapped her arms around his shoulders as far as they'd go, and squeezed. "I don't want to see you hurt and blaming yourself when you tried as hard as you could."

"When I..." he murmured, almost inaudibly. Then suddenly, loudly, he exclaimed "Ha!" and struck his thigh with his palm, the sharp crack making Tahlea squeak in surprise. "_Thank_ you, Tahlea!"

"For what?" She was initially nervous because of his sudden change in demeanor, but quickly realized that it wasn't anger or bitterness in his face and tone. He was excited, even energized.

"For what you said--that we'd tried as hard as we could. Because of course that is exactly what we _haven't_ done. The subject was personal for me and intensely so for Lillet. We encountered a major problem, yes--even an outright failure of our first breakthrough theory. But we have not yet tried to overcome that obstacle. We surrendered to emotion, and in doing so lost our way."

"But it's only natural to--"

"True, it is natural," he agreed. "But it isn't efficient or rational. Lillet's goals and my goals both spring from emotional needs." He gestured with an upraised index finger, slipping unconsciously into the mode of a lecturer. "The problem itself, though, is _not_ emotional, as compared to the problems I faced with you and Amoretta. For the two of you, your emotional needs are as vital to your existence as your physical ones; love affects the outcome. But for Lillet's difficulties, love only informs the problem. She wishes for a child out of love, and to be a good mother love is necessary, but the obstacles to _conception_ are a purely technical issue to overcome. Rather than falling prey to despair at encountering failure, we must analyze that failure and overcome it. If anything, the emotion should give us a greater drive, a stronger determination to achieve a solution!"

Tahlea smiled, suppressing a giggle. It was so cute, the way Chartreuse was analyzing the impact of his own emotions and discussing them like they were the ingredients in a new chimera formula. His naivete about some matters she found charming, although probably not in a way that he wished to hear.

But she was happy, really happy that he'd gotten over his bout of self-reproach. Tahlea had no idea if his renewed efforts would be in any way successful, but it gave her hope, hope for Lillet and Amoretta's baby but also hope that this renewed determination might also extend towards the division between her sister and her father.

Chartreuse surprised her again, by reaching out and giving her a quick, impulsive hug.

"Thank you, Tahlea. It...it's nice to have someone I can turn to," he said in tones of wonderment. She smiled back and kissed the tip of his nose.


	9. Lillet III

"I must look a fright," Lillet said in a hoarse whisper. Her throat burned, her eyes stung, her nose was stuffed, and her head was pounding like an anvil beneath a blacksmith's hammer. No doubt her face was all blotchy, too.

Amoretta smiled at her. "Not at all, dearest." The smile, Lillet knew, was because Lillet had recovered enough to make a joke, however feeble, after spending the better part of an hour crying into her pillow. Amoretta had sat by her the entire time, holding her hand and gently stroking her hair.

"Thank you," she croaked.

Amoretta shook her head.

"No, not at all." She got up, walked over to the tea cart, and poured a cup. Lillet hadn't even noticed when it was brought in. "Here, drink this. It will help soothe your throat."

Lillet sat up and accepted the cup. It was an herbal blend, she realized from the fragrant smell, something soothing instead of energizing.

"Why shouldn't I thank you? You take such good care of me.." She sipped; the hot liquid felt good.

Amoretta, though, looked down and to the side.

"It's the least I can do," she said softly.

"Amoretta..." Lillet responded, realizing what was wrong. "It's not _your_ fault."

"Not _fault_," Amoretta agreed. "It's not something that I did or failed to do, but it is because of me, because I'm not human, and you were hurt by it."

Lillet sighed.

"I feel so foolish. I mean, crying over the failure of an alchemy experiment."

There was a stirring from the foot of the bed and Grimalkin raised his head from where he had curled up.

"The loss of hope 'tis always painful," he offered, "and is as real a loss as more tangible ones." He began washing his paw with tiny flicks of his bright pink tongue. Amoretta reached down and scratched him behind the ears.

"He's quite right, Lillet. Isn't grief more about what people and things mean to us than for what is actually lost?"

Lillet nodded. "I suppose so. It felt"--she shook her head--"no, it feels just like our daughter has died."

"Daughter?" Grimalkin asked. "Did you not want a son?"

"All the mice bred from two females were also female. That's ridiculously unlikely in nature, so Dr. Chartreuse and I believe that part of what a child gets from its father is the possibility of being male. Which is one in the eye for all the men in history who get mad at their wives for 'not giving them sons.' So our child would...have been a little girl..."

She could feel herself starting to tear up again when the cat intercepted her with another comment.

"But I'd have sworn Tahlea called her pet a male." His confusion was self-evident even on a feline face; his wide green eyes blinked at her. Amoretta giggled in response.

"It's going to be a very confused mouse," she said.

"I know," said Lillet. "She didn't ask if it was a boy or a girl. We should tell her, but I don't think the mouse will really care if it has a boy's name."

Her gaze flicked back and forth between Amoretta and the cat, realizing how the question had deflected her emotions. _Was Grimalkin just curious? Or did he do it on purpose? Or did Amoretta prompt him somehow?_ She didn't know, but she'd have wagered on either of the latter two explanations.

_What a crazy little family I have,_ she thought affectionately. A homunculus with an angel's soul, the angel's pet devil, and an elf. Perfect for a magician, really, and she loved them all.

"Thank you both."

Cat and mistress glanced at one another.

"You noticed?" Amoretta asked.

"I'm supposed to be a Machiavellian political schemer, aren't I? If I can trick my enemies into tripping over their own feet by their own doing, I can at least notice when the people that care about me are looking out for my feelings."

Amoretta smiled, probably because humor was again a good sign.

"And are your feelings...?"

Lillet sighed.

"It's going to hurt a lot, for a long time." She released the teacup with one hand so she could reach for Amoretta; the other woman slipped effortlessly into her embrace. Lillet buried her face in Amoretta's hair, the delicate scent familiar and comforting. "But I'm really, really blessed, too. You make it very, very easy to remember that."

_I've been given everything in my life I've ever wanted, _she thought ruefully. _I wanted to become a great magician, and I'm possibly as powerful as any since King Solomon himself. I wanted to help my family, and now my brothers are studying to become whatever they want to be in life while my parents could retire now if they didn't still enjoy running the farm. I have a home of my own that's as near as a palace to matter. I have wealth, I have social status, I have authority._

_I have love._

_I have someone who cares for me, who looks out for me, who dreams a dream for my sake instead of her own. And I've been gifted with the kind of power that lets me take a lover who's neither human nor male and live openly with her in the face of anyone's opinion._

It meant, Lillet realized, that this was the first time there'd been something she'd really wanted in life, something important, that she couldn't have. The idea made her feel a little guilty over her reaction.

It didn't make the sense of loss easier to accept, though.

-X X X-

Lillet stood at the sideboard trying to decide between bacon and sausage. She hadn't had much of an appetite the night before, when she'd taken dinner on a tray in her room, and her stomach was now reminding her that while the mind may have been in charge, the body had demands of its own to make.

"You eat a lot for breakfast," Tahlea remarked while helping herself to toast.

"And you claim that you're not as bluntly honest as Amoretta."

A faint blush stained her cheeks.

"I...didn't mean it that way."

Lillet grinned.

"I was teasing, silly. How did you mean it?"

"Well, you're a lot like Father; you get distracted by work and forget to take care of yourself sometimes."

"It's a researcher's curse."

"But you always eat a full breakfast. I've even noticed that when you don't eat well at supper Gaff will put out the kinds of foods you skipped for the next day's breakfast."

"It's a farm-girl habit," Lillet said.

"Oh?"

"My parents have a farm in this district. Chores start before dawn, so when you reach the breakfast table, you're already hungry, and you also need to fuel up to get ready for the day, So ever since I was a little girl I've always eaten large breakfasts. Since it's really more of a habit than a choice, I do it even when I'm distracted by something since following habits are the path of least resistance."

"I see. It's sweet, though, how he takes care of you."

"Well, like he always says, where would we magicians be if we didn't have elves to handle the details for us?"

Though Lillet and Amoretta typically preferred to breakfast on the garden terrace, with their guests joining them they'd moved inside since the dining room was better suited for serving food. Dr. Chartreuse was the last to arrive and his rumpled clothing suggested he'd stayed up all night. There was a fevered brightness in his eyes, and he eagerly rubbed his hands together as he approached the table.

"Miss Lillet! I believe that I--"

Tahlea, though, ruthlessly cut him off.

"_Food_, Father!" She pointed to the sideboard. "You've obviously been up all night, and you have to take care of yourself."

"She's _definitely_ your sister, Amoretta," Lillet said with a grin.

"If our loved ones won't look out for yourselves," Amoretta replied, "then we'll just have to do it for you." She stabbed her fork into one of Lillet's sausages and held it under the Mage Consul's nose until she obediently took a bite.

"Aw, you two are so cute," Tahlea said, slipping bacon under the table to Grimalkin. Lillet grinned and Amoretta smiled shyly.

Chartreuse returned to the table with a well-laden plate and a steaming cup of coffee. Under Tahlea's watchful eye, he consumed a good half of what was before him before he tried to speak again. Lillet put away most of her own breakfast while waiting, but she had to admit that she was eager to hear the news. If Chartreuse had been up all night working, then there was really only one thing he could have been working on, and if he had news that he was excited to tell her...

The stirrings of hope gave Lillet a faint fluttering in her stomach. She told herself not to get too excited yet, to wait and hear the alchemist out before making judgments, but it was hard to keep calm since the topic was so close to her heart.

At last, Chartreuse cast a meaningful glance at Tahlea, who smiled and nodded; he'd apparently eaten enough to satisfy her concerns.

"I've been thinking over our problems from yesterday, Miss Lillet," he began again. "Indeed, I've been working on them all night, as Tahlea observed."

"It shows," Lillet said. "I'm familiar with the symptoms myself, of course."

"The problem is that Amoretta is a different form of life than you are. Between us we managed to carry out your plan, to use a man's seed as carrier for a woman's natural qualities so that a child would express the traits of two mothers. However, this did not work for Amoretta because of her inhuman biology. For example," he gestured at her plate, which bore the crumbs of a single croissant, "she eats considerably less than a human because much of the energy sustaining her life comes from the magical reaction within her flask instead of from food."

"I know that," Lillet said, perhaps a bit more sharply than was necessary due to her impatience.

"My apologies; the habits of being a professor have grown on me, I'm afraid," he said, looking a little sheepish.

"It's all right." Surprisingly, it was Amoretta who'd spoken. "I've missed most of what's happened, so it's good to hear it put into words, even if I understand roughly how things have gone already."

"Thank you."

Lillet told herself to relax and took a bite of melon.

"What appeared to be inescapable truth," Chartreuse continued, "was that as a homunculus it was impossible for Amoretta to reproduce. She is not found in nature; her existence is as a crafted thing rather than as a product of the world as it is. This is why I could only make her existence a lasting, stable one by building her around a pre-existing core, a creation of God's rather than my own."

Lillet traced a fingertip along the back of Amoretta's hand where it rested on the table.

"But you no longer believe that to be inescapable?" Lillet asked.

"Well, yes and no. As far as biologically, no, that isn't something that can be changed. A homunculus is not a human. But I also realized that making a child from Amoretta's body isn't exactly the goal in any case."

"Then what is the goal?"

"To make a child as _if_ it came from Amoretta. Consider your method. We do not actually use the blood from the female that replaces the father. Instead, we alchemically _change_ the seed of a male so that the elements of heredity within it exactly _match_ those of the 'father' female. Thus we do not use the _actual_ body of the woman but only an identical copy of it. So as I see it, what if we took the process a step further? Yes, Amoretta is not human, but she does possess many qualities a human possesses: the shape of her face, the color of her hair, the pigmentation of her skin, the tone of her voice, and so on. Thus, what I thought was, if there were a way to transfer the _equivalent_ of those qualities to a _human_ blood sample--yours, I believe would be best so no third person would be involved--and then use that sample with our existing process. The result would be a child that would be, say, two-thirds yours and one-third Amoretta's, but nonetheless a child born of the two of you."

Lillet's heart rose with hope, but she also perceived the flaw immediately.

"There's a problem, though. We don't know how heredity works, so adjusting my blood to match Amoretta's traits can't be done the way we change the seed to match the blood sample. That's a matter of copying: make A conform to B. But we can't do it for Amoretta because her body doesn't have human biology. We'd be saying 'change A to be what it needs to be to make it _equivalent to_ B to the extent applicable.' At that point, you're no longer manipulating nature. That extra step isn't working within nature's laws any more, but directly transforming the matter of the universe in accordance with your will."

She paused, waiting to see if he'd considered that point and, if so, what his solution was.

"I agree. Glamour and alchemy cannot accomplish that task. It can only be achieved at our present state of knowledge by sorcery."

"Which as I've already said, I don't want to use for this. To put my child's existence into the hands of a devil, even in such a small way."

Chartreuse sighed.

"I feared such would be the case, but I felt obliged to mention it, since it is a solution to the problem that would work."

Lillet nodded.

"I'm glad you did. It's just...I don't trust that I can keep tight enough control over a devil on a matter this important. It's not something that I can settle by balancing probabilities or weighing risks versus rewards. The only way it could work is if I found a devil that I could not only control, but trust."

"A difficult matter indeed, given the nature of devils."

Grimalkin meowed from under the table and butted at Tahlea's leg in hopes of another treat.


	10. Cressidor

Sister Velletri watched her two visitors thoughtfully. She knew who they were, of course; in religious circles the very existence of the office of Mage Consul was a subject for much debate, with suspicious tolerance the prevailing attitude in the capital despite a strong faction that condemned outright the growing acceptance of magic in society. The nun had never expected to have the kingdom's chief witch within her precincts. Her companion was of a more mundane career, a singer, though gossip painted that profession almost as darkly; a beautiful woman would be assumed to be some wealthy patron's mistress. This latter assumption was obviously true in the case of Lillet Blan and Amoretta Virgine, though their manner suggested the connection was born of love rather than money. Which made for yet another problem: two women together, without even a pretense of keeping it secret. Between those three things, Sister Velletri should have found _something_ to outrage her sensibilities.

Yet she did not. It wasn't even difficult for her to realize why. The nun's primary concern in the world was the welfare of her charges, the care of twenty-seven children of various ages that had been entrusted to the orphanage. She found it impossible to worry about peripheral issues when a young woman showed such ease with the curious and eager children who'd clustered around her in the courtyard--or who showed such sadness when she was walking through the hall with Sister Velletri.

"They'll probably never be adopted, will they?" Lillet asked softly.

"They won't?" Amoretta asked. "Why?"

"Their age," Lillet said. "Parents want to adopt a baby that they can raise, not a child who not only carries someone else's blood but also someone else's parenting, someone else's lessons. You and I are the same--well, I am," she amended. "Am I right, Sister Velletri?"

The nun nodded.

"That's quite right, Miss Blan."

"What happens to them?" Amoretta asked, worried.

"When they reach a suitable age, we attempt to find them a proper apprenticeship to insure that they have a future. They do not end up on the streets or in the workhouse," she added somewhat defensively.

"But not always in a profession they'd have chosen for themselves," Lillet responded.

"We believe in dealing with the practicalities first: insure that a child _has_ a future, and after that one can try to shape it."

Lillet nodded.

"I understand."

Sister Velletri thought that indeed she did.

"But come with me. You are here for a more hopeful reason than that."

She led the way down the hall and around the corner to the nursery. Of the children of the orphanage, four were still babies, with this one room dedicated to them. Four wooden cribs stood in a neat row.

"You said that you were hoping to adopt a girl?" she asked.

"That's right," Amoretta said, and Lillet directed a look of such tenderness at her that the nun was sure there was some private meaning behind it.

"Two of our charges are female; the children are--" she began, but was cut off by a sudden gasp from the Mage Consul. Lillet stepped past her and approached the second crib. The baby gurgled and looked up at her with wide blue eyes.

"Look, Amoretta," she said, reaching out to brush the wispy ash-blonde curls that clung to the child's head, "she has your hair."

Sister Velletri didn't ask how Lillet had known that child was one of the girls despite the four of them having identical cribs and swaddling clothes. She knew well enough that it was often such small things that brought a child a home, that moment of connection kindling the start of parental feelings.

"What's her name?" Lillet asked.

"She didn't have one, so we christened her Marie."

"That's my mother's name," Lillet murmured, though the coincidence was not that remarkable--it was the most common girl's name in the kingdom. "So she already has a little from each of us." She looked down at the girl again. "What do you think, miss? Do you think you'd like to be Cressidor Marie Blan-Virgine?"

Amoretta giggled.

"Is that even a word, let alone a name?"

"Well, _I_ like it," Lillet laughed, "though I did think it up when I was six. What do you think, Cress?"

The baby clearly knew a cue when she heard it; she smiled and gurgled.

"There, you see? _She's_ on my side."

Amoretta smiled back.

"I can't complain, then."

Sister Velletri sighed internally as she considered what she had to do next. It wasn't fair, but some people did care about such things, and the nun was not going to taint the child's future with lies, even ones of omission.

"I must tell you, Miss Blan, Miss Virgine, that Marie's past is not all that it could be."

"Oh? Isn't she a little young to have a sordid history?"

"I agree, but I have to be honest. Her mother was a woman of the streets. She brought Marie to us a month ago, when it became clear she was too ill to properly raise a child." Realizing how that might sound, she hastened to correct any misapprehension. "It was nothing that might be passed on to the child, I assure you; it was lingering complications from the birth combined with exposure and malnutrition. Marie is a perfectly healthy baby."

Lillet's face had grown flat and expressionless, and the nun's heart sank, but what the magician next said wasn't what Sister Velletri had expected.

"A month ago? Do you remember the exact date?"

"I'd have to look it up in the record to be sure, but I believe it was the day after the visit by the Archbishop's clerk." She confirmed that in her own mind and gave the date.

Amoretta's eyes widened in surprise.

"But...that's the date that--"

Lillet nodded.

"That we decided that we wanted a child," she finished. "Do you believe in omens, Sister Velletri?"

"I believe in providence," she replied.

"And _I_ believe," Lillet said with a smile, "that we have paperwork to attend to."

-X X X-

It was done.

Lillet had already had the petition for adoption drafted by her solicitor before visiting the orphanage; it was only a matter of filling in the original with the child's personal information and the orphanage's name and location. Ordinarily she didn't like to use the power of her office for purely personal matters, but in this case she was willing to break a rule; a messenger was summoned, a letter written, and in under two hours a copy of the adoption certificate as properly signed and sealed by the magistrate's court was in her hands.

The emotion didn't really hit her, though, until she picked up Cress for the first time.

_She was a mother_.

The girl looked up at her, wide-eyed and trusting. It felt right to Lillet, like this was something that she was meant for. She caressed the baby's cheek, making her laugh.

Sister Velletri was smiling, too. Lillet had expected objections from the sisters, the kind that her political authority and magical power usually insulated her from, but the nun had proven her wrong. This wasn't some solemn duty to her, to be taken on coldly and rigidly; Sister Velletri clearly loved her charges. Their well-being was more important to her than little things like a lesbian relationship between a witch and a homunculus. A large anonymous donation was in order, Lillet decided; a truly charitable spirit, rather than one that dispensed good works with icy righteousness, ought to be encouraged.

"Thank you so much," Lillet said, still a little awed.

"No, thank you both," Sister Velletri countered. "You can't know what this means."

"Yes, I can," Amoretta told her. "I know exactly what it means, to give a person a home when she's all alone in the world." The look she gave Lillet made the magician's heart melt all over again.

-X X X-

"Do you regret it?" Amoretta asked as the carriage rattled over the cobblestones on their way home.

Lillet looked up at her in surprise.

"Regret?"

"Choosing to adopt, rather than accepting Creator's solution to the natural child problem."

Lillet shook her head.

"No. I did at first, a little, but I don't. Not once Cress stopped being an idea and became a person. One idea can seem more attractive than another, but a little girl is better than any idea."

Amoretta was glad. Her only worry had been that if Lillet saw the resolution as being second-best then she would see Cress the same way. The truth was that Amoretta actually preferred to adopt. Perhaps because she was an artificial being, she didn't feel any particular desire to carry on her own "bloodline," and she'd been speaking the truth to Sister Velletri: she was glad to take someone who might otherwise not know the warmth of family and offer them that hope, because she knew what it was like to be without. She hoped she'd be able to be a good mother.

"You never told me why," she remarked.

Lillet had no trouble comprehending her meaning.

"It was because of you."

"Me? I didn't say anything."

Lillet shook her head.

"Yes, you did, way back when we began, the day I announced that I wanted a child. It was what you said about being charitable. It came back to me, then, when I started to ask myself about it. How far was I willing to go for an impossible dream? It's not that I distrusted Grimalkin, but what it meant about me. It just seemed that there had come a point where I had to stop and say, 'I'm going too far.' Other people might think differently, I suppose. You probably wouldn't have even started."

"When did you know how I felt?"

"From the start, I think. It's mostly because parenthood was primarily my dream that I didn't just give in right away. And it gave us an excuse to invite Dr. Chartreuse and Tahlea."

_So she'd known_. The thought made Amoretta happy. She had no objection to Lillet's originally going ahead with her own wished, because she agreed with Lillet's reasoning. What mattered was that Lillet had been perceptive enough to see Amoretta's feelings without having to be told directly. That that kind of intimacy existed between them was everything she wanted. She wondered if she and Lillet would understand Cressidor's feelings that way someday. Maybe they would. It was about love, and she knew the both of them had plenty of that to offer.

"Um...May I...?"

She extended her arms tentatively towards Lillet, who smiled.

"You'd better! You're her mom too, after all."

Lillet handed the sleeping baby over and Amoretta gently cradled her against her chest the way her lover had. It felt strange but not uncomfortable, and there was an odd..._glow_, she supposed she could call it, within her. _So this is what it feels like,_ she thought. _Being a parent._ She was not surprised--she'd told Lillet right from the start that she was certain she'd love any child of theirs, and she had been telling the truth. But the feeling itself was still new and different. Experiencing it was not the same as just anticipating it.

"I hope we'll do a good job."

"We'll do the best that we can," Lillet said. "Sometimes we'll make mistakes and say or do the wrong thing, and I'm sure she will too, but so long as we make them out of love I think we'll be all right."

Amoretta turned to look at her lover, who gave her shoulder an encouraging squeeze. She tipped her head and nuzzled her cheek against the back of Lillet's hand.

_So long as we make them out of love..._

Yes, she was right, Amoretta decided. Motherhood wouldn't be easy work, but it wasn't impossible by any means.

The carriage passed between the gargoyle-crested gateposts of their home and followed the curving drive up to the house. As ever, Lillet opened the door, flipped down the step, and climbed out before the coachman had a chance to descend from the box, then took Amoretta's hand and assisted her to descend. They went up the steps and inside, and there, waiting for them, was everyone: Gaff and Grimalkin, Tahlea, and Dr. Chartreuse.

"So that's her, huh?" Gaff said. "Better get ready with silence spells if you want to get any sleep."

Lillet grinned.

"Don't worry, Gaff; getting up in the middle of the night with a baby is a mom's job."

"She's really cute," Tahlea cooed, getting closer to look. Grimalkin hopped up into her arms so he could see, too. All the attention proved too much to sleep through; Cressidor stirred in Amoretta's arms and came awake. She looked around at all the faces, her wide blue eyes blinking.

"Come on," Lillet said to Dr. Chartreuse, who was hanging back hesitantly behind the others. "Come closer. She doesn't bite--and even if she did, she doesn't have any teeth yet."

Tahlea and Gaff moved aside to make room for Amoretta's creator. His eyes took in the baby, then rose to meet Amoretta's gaze. There were questions in them as he tentatively extended one furred hand towards the child.

"Creator, this is my daughter Cressidor," she said, then waited a beat before continuing. "Cressidor, say hello to your grandfather."

The alchemist drew in his breath with a surprised--and happy--gasp, and one of Cress's tiny hands clamped onto his finger and squeezed. Lillet slipped an arm around Amoretta's waist, drawing the two close together, while Gaff and Tahlea clustered in, filling spaces to close the circle.

And Amoretta knew, that though time and distance and ultimately mortality would at last draw them apart, that her memory of this moment would keep them all together in her heart forever.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_A/N: "Velletri" is a wine-producing region in Italy that was once part of the Papal States, so it seemed an appropriate name for a nun. And Cressidor _Marie_ Blan-_Virgine_ is definitely too young to drink, so her name comes from a Virgin Mary. Thank you for reading, everyone!_


End file.
